Hunting Matthew Nichols - My Take (Spoilers)

 

This was yet another Scream Unseen. There's been quite a few of them in a row. I can see why they've been doing this because the movies, quite frankly, need all the help they can get.

"Hunting Matthew Nichols" is a combination pseudo documentary, found footage, and cult movie. That means a lot of people speaking for the camera with title cards as to who they are, shaky camera work, and pure laziness.

Side note. I'm sick and tired of writers falling back on the satanic cult thing to wrap up a storyline. It's flat out lazy and the market has been flooded for a while. It feels like they can't quite figure out how to tie it all together so they slap a cult situation in and call it good. No. It is not good.

The premise here is that Tara is still looking for answers as to why her brother disappeared twenty three years earlier. Her brother's friend also disappeared with him but she really doesn't care about him. She's back in her remote hometown with a director and camera person. She also makes a big point of the fact that she's worn the necklace her brother gave her all those years. It's silver with a kind of viking/celtic design.

While she's there she interviews her own family, the family of the other kid, and the police investigator. These are mixed in with her going through the evidence box the police finally coughed up. Why that took twenty three years and a court order isn't really discussed. In the box is a bone totem along with video tapes, etc.

Oh. The movie also notes that the area has an unusually high number of unsolved missing persons cases.

What we get is Tara overacting about everything. The police investigator also gets her own overacted monologue. The other kid's father gets exposition but he keeps it lower key. We get a lot of talk talk talk. It's how we find out about a local legend where there's some sort of old settlement with a creepy guy who showed up once in a while then they all went missing.

The father of the other kid hands over an old journal that the boys supposedly found in the local history museum and seem to have taken because when Tara saw the footage of them finding it she went there and didn't find it. It has a pictorial version of that legend along with other stuff. Including, big surprise, what seems to be an incantation and ritual.

The found footage comes from tapes they find in the evidence box. Unusually we don't get to see much of it. We see the reactions to people watching it. Tara figures out the tape that was in the video camera found in a weird abandoned cabin the police decided was the last known location of the kids isn't in evidence. She has to get another court order for that.

The police investigator gets her monologue when Tara confronts her about the missing evidence. That's when the investigator says it was withheld for the public good and that she can't take Tara to the cabin (or give directions) because the city tore it down.

Tara does get the last tape and this is the most we see of the found footage. It's the standard horror stuff with scared people, voices off camera, and horror violence. Yeah. Given that Tara is adamant that they go to the site of the cabin.

The camera person quite wisely decides to nope out. The director has a brief internal struggle but does go. Off the two of them go into the woods with a map, some supplies, and hopefully an end to this rather drab and boring movie.

They get to the site. It's completely clear, as if there had never been a cabin. Being the careful people they are they set up their little pop tents in the clearing. Sigh.

Tara, being Tara, attempts to perform the ritual she found using her necklace, her blood, the bone totem, and what she found in the journal. It's a bust and they go to bed.

Except maybe not? Because they get woken up to find the cabin, right where it was before. Not that they know it was exact but hey, there's a cabin where there wasn't a cabin. So of course she goes in, in the middle of the night, after performing an unknown ritual. The director has an internal struggle then follows her in.

She's doing another ritual on the cabin floor and says she's in contact with her brother. This is where I kind of frown and wonder if it's a clue, a foreboding, or a mistake. She's using her necklace as the conduit and doing the "right for yes, left for no" form of contact. For every question where she says the answer is yes, the necklace is swinging left for her point of view. It's going to the right for the director (and camera) in front of her.

This is the only potentially interesting thing in the movie, in my opinion. Because it would have been a great way to forebode what's going to happen and how much she's caught up in her own needs. When she asks if she's speaking to her brother, it goes left from her point of view but she says it's proof it is him.

Anyway. Now we're into the cult thing. A door opens in the cabin and she's dragged into the darkness after she asks her brother to show himself. The director wisely beats feet out of there, dropping his camera in almost the exact place the evidence photos showed her brother's camera.

Tara does run out of the cabin saying she was wrong and it wasn't her brother. Duh. The director gets his foot caught in an old bear trap and kinda can't run much now. He blacks out (or something) and wakes up to see Tara standing naked in front of him, facing away and looking at a tree. He looks up to see other nekkid people with shiny eyes and decides that the bear trap ain't going to keep him there. She's got shiny eyes. He runs, leaving the camera. It shows a lot of people coming down from the tree and following him.

Credits roll.

A quick scene has the camera person running in the hospital and the director is in bed with bloody bandages around his face. He sits up and screams.

Now the movie is over.

Yeah. Not a lot I can say about this one. I guess we're supposed to think there's a cult out there that's taking people and they're living in the woods? There's something supernatural living in the deep woods? I dunno.

I do know that having Tara's obsession with finding out what happened to her brother just isn't that interesting. I found no compassion for her because she's a whiny, demanding bitch here. She shows up and disrupts people's lives for no good reason. She lies to the police investigator who told her to turn off the camera, she said she did, and the director is crouched outside the room with the camera on. Yeah, obsession. I get it. It still gets dull.

The whole cult thing also doesn't do anything. It comes out of nowhere. There's absolutely no indication that there's anything going on, except the statement about disappearances. No one in the town seems to know there's anything hinkey in the woods all around them. Plus the guy in the hospital would not have blood soaked bandages. Hospitals frown on that kind of thing when the patient is admitted and under care.

So I'd say skip this one as I say to skip so many of the horror movies being released. I honestly don't know why there's a glut of them now and why they're so bad. Independent filmmakers are not spending their money wisely if this is what they're choosing to make.

Project Hail Mary - My Take, With Bonus Features! (Spoilers)

 

I waited to review this one and then got caught up with not being at the computer. I'm guessing that anyone reading this has either seen the movie, read a review, or both. So it's not like I'll be saying things other people haven't said. I'm adding a part at the bottom about the book, which I read after seeing the movie - the order I recommend. The movie review will NOT have references to what was in the book.

The Movie

The premise of the movie is that there's something taking energy from the sun and it's going to drop Earth's temperature into the "extinction event" levels. This is bad. Dr. Grace is a middle school science teacher after nuking his higher academic career by both writing a long paper about how water isn't necessary for all life forms and calling out his colleagues by name and with eloquent insults in the paper. Whoopsie. But he's one of those school teachers who's got the charisma to engage his students and an honest enthusiasm for science.

The movie uses the premise of Grace having to remember the past while he's in the present. He wakes up on a spaceship with little to no memory of what happened or even who he is. As he's figuring that out he's also figuring out what he's supposed to be doing. As a bad bonus the other two crew members died in the voyage so it's just him.

To cut the movie into two is easier for me than going back and forth. I can summarize the stuff that needs summarizing better that way.

The backstory is that Eva has the power and authority to do pretty much anything she thinks is necessary to find out what's happening and how to fix it. They're going to send a crewed ship to Tau Ceti because that star isn't infected even if it should be so they figure the answer is there. While that's getting set up they're finding all kinds of uses for the astrophage, including it being fuel for the ship. Grace had accidentally figured out how to make more of it (breed it) and they're doing that in great quantities.

Because of an accident both of the science officer astronauts are killed, which leaves Grace as the next candidate because Eva hedged her bets and had him involved in most aspects of the project. They don't have time to train anyone because the launch window is in three days. He doesn't want to go but he's drugged and sent anyway. As I said, she'd do what it takes.

Grace picks up memories as they apply to what's happening at the time. He's filling in the blanks, which also builds the story for the viewers. It doesn't distract as much as you might think but it is something where you have to realize it's not linear time for quite a few scenes. Plus there's some where the point of view may annoy but it's better storytelling.

He gets to do science when he makes contact with the alien ship. He's discovering the alien just as we are. Yes, I know that's how storytelling works but this is done in a way that takes us along the interesting and important steps.

The alien doesn't have vision and uses passive echolocation to "see". This creates a communication problem so there's time spent showing them learning how to talk to each other. Rocky says his tones, Grace has a transcoder and is making a dictionary. During that they converse and learn about each other and each other's worlds.

Rocky is alone too because the rest of the crew died on the way. Grace is the one to break the bad news that it was radiation that killed them and Rocky was saved because his quarters/area were protected by the astrophage fuel tanks. Turns out Rocky's people didn't know about space radiation. Turns out they're not very versed in a lot of sciences. Grace is so he's the lead of figuring out what's happening. Rocky gives the down to Erid (his planet, which I gleefully used instead of Earth in this idiom) advice when Grace is too far in the clouds to see the basics.

Rocky moves over to Grace's ship to use the science equipment. He has a hamster ball for himself and builds habitrails through the ship for him to use. There's some Odd Couple vibe going on and the entire cultural difference problem that gets explained as needed. This is where it turns into a buddy cop movie and it works for them.

One thing that's very important to Rocky is that Grace watches him sleep and he watches Grace sleep. It's a cultural thing. There was some initial miscommunication about what "sleep" was because Rocky was conflating it with dying and didn't want to lose Grace like he did his crew. That's when the "I watch you sleep" happens. Grace accepts that it just has to be that way.

Rocky finds out that Grace lied to him and isn't going home. He's going to send everything back on the little ships and die. Rocky finds this unacceptable and does the math to figure out he can provide enough astrophage for Grace to get home at the cost of him getting home a few years later. Grace accepts with much gratitude since he was very much not at peace with what was going to happen.

Science happens and they decide they need a sample from the planet that's feeding Tau Ceti. Off they go in Grace's ship. The science is that there's something on that planet that's keeping the sun in balance so it doesn't get cooler. The reason for that is on the planet, they hope. They do find that there's spots where there's concentrations of .. stuff. Science means getting a sample since that may be the answer.

This is one of the most powerful scenes in the film. You'll hear people calling it "the fishing scene". They get the ship as close to the planet as they can and drop a probe into one of the areas to gather up whatever they can. The scene is quite frankly beautiful. Everyone says that the theater they were in is dead silent during that scene and it was both times I saw it. It's freaking beautiful.

This also brings one of the most tension filled scenes into play when the ship goes into an uncontrolled spin and knocks Grace unconscious before he can correct it. Rocky breaks out of his ball into the ship's deadly atmosphere and drags Grace to the med bed. Grace wakes up and follows the trail of "blood" to where Rocky is curled up in his bedroom area. He moves slightly.

While Rocky is lying there Grace does the science stuff on what the probe brought back and uses science to create a version that will live in Venus's atmosphere. Since nothing is said it's assumed that unmodified taumeba will live in the planet by Rocky. 

Grace talks to Rocky during all this, which is the story exposition done well. And of course, Rocky wakes up. There's a heartfelt tearjerker here and Grace tells him that the collector worked, they got the predator they wanted, and he was able to use Rocky's breeder farms to make enough for both of them.

Now that they have what their suns need there's the parting of the ways. It's sad. It's very sad. But they know it has to happen. For whatever reason Grace cuts the tube away instead of Rocky deconstructing it like he did last time (that bothers me) and they go their separate ways.

Grace gets woken up by a contamination alert. The breeder farm was made of metal that Rocky's people use to make pretty much everything. The taumeba are little fuckers and while Grace was adapting them to not die in nitrogen they were figuring out how to escape through the stuff. He flushes the ship and seals them in plastic bags, which they can't get through.

Then he has the realization that Rocky's ship is made of that metal and he's not a scientist so he has no idea what's going to happen nor can he fix the problem since the problem is his ship itself. Rocky is going to die alone in space. This is .. not good. Grace doesn't have the resources to both go back to Earth and to save Rocky.

In the end he sends the probes back to Earth with the taumeba, all their research, everything about Rocky, etc. He goes out and finds Rocky, luckily still alive but a few tense moments when we're not sure. I wouldn't have put it past them to make it too late and knowing that made the tension real. Rocky is alive and very concerned, because he knows something is wrong and because he knows Grace can't get home.

The movie ends with Grace on Erid in a bubble they built for him. Rocky is in a much better "suit" that lets him walk instead of roll. He tells Grace that the scientists have repaired and refitted his ship to get him back to Earth. Grace asks to think about it and Rocky says to think about it a long time. The movie ends with Grace going to a cave entrance where there's a bunch of stuff on his side, a clear wall, and a bunch of little Rocky creatures that are his students. They're energetic little buggers and he's teaching them science.

It's a tearjerker movie at times. They make you care about not just Grace and Rocky but the fates of their worlds.

There's people who say they made Rocky too "light" and used him for comedic relief, against an actor who's already doing comic relief. That shows they didn't read any of the nuances. Rocky is an engineer. Grace is a scientist. They're both voraciously interested in what the other one does. They're also two entirely different cultures learning about each other at the same time. That's going to cause a lot of the situations that they show. Failure to see all those things means these are people who look for the movies to spell everything out for them so they don't have to think for themselves. Yes. I'm dissing those people.

I was lucky enough to see it on real 70mm film IMAX the first time. The massive screen and beautifully balanced sound - sigh. We saw print 9 of 15. Yes. There's only 15 prints of the movie. It's about 12 miles long and weighs around 700 pounds. There's a certain warmth about film even if it was filmed digitally and transferred to physical film. During the quiet parts I could hear the projector. It's something. And the screen is freaking huge. I think I'm going to see it on IMAX again just because I'm lucky enough to be able to do so.

The second time I saw it was the local digital IMAX. It was still visually stunning. It was brighter and I could focus on details that were missed on the big screen because there was just so much to look at. The place where the cropped IMAX falls short are the space scenes. Those are the ones in the big aspect ratio. If you haven't seen it in real IMAX you won't notice what you're missing so don't fret.

I think this one is going up for a number of awards but the ones it should sweep are the technical ones. The visuals and cinematography are going to be hard to beat. There's so many practical effects that the CGI heavy movies will seem shallow in comparison. I don't think it will get any major awards for acting or writing.

The Book

If you've ever read an Andy Weir book you know you're reading a science book. Andy wants the science right and he's gonna write about it. That's why his books are as good as they are. They expect you to follow along instead of dumbing it down.

I'm going to focus on the things that were in the book but not in the movie. That's why I watched, then read. Not knowing what was excluded meant I got to take the movie as its own entity. That's important to me.

The book goes into a lot more detail about various and sundry scientists on Earth. They were reduced, eliminated, combined in the movie. It makes sense because the movie isn't about them. It's about the end result of what they did but who did it is irrelevant to the movie. That's why so much of the pre-mission stuff was removed. It didn't add to the story the movie was going to tell.

The book had one pseudo-science thing that was a plot device. There was a genetic component to who could be safely put into the induced coma. That limited the available people. Grace happened to be one of them but he wasn't told until he was being told he's going on the mission. Even Andy wasn't completely happy with that piece but it was something that needed to be done to cause the situation where they had limited options for replacements.

Grace didn't realize how much he was being groomed for the project until it was made very clear to him during one of the parties. They had to point out how he was present for almost all of the major meetings, involved in most of the science, etc. The primary captain had everyone's respect from the moment he was named (for reasons never stated) and he's the one who stood up and settled it by telling Grace he's the second in command of the project.

Another thing the book didn't carry into the movie was the intentional climate change ordered by Eva. They nuke Antarctica to get the methane that's in the ice released into the atmosphere. What makes this wrenching is that she uses the research of a well-known climatologist to be the one to plan and execute it. 

Grace's forced addition to the crew was much less dramatic in the book. Instead of him making a run for it, like the movie, he's in a cell then drugged. The captain had said he didn't want anyone who didn't volunteer which made Eva have to make a slight change to her plans and send Grace aboard in the coma, with the captain's objections something she won't have to deal with.

Another big thing that was changed was Rocky's planet Enid. In the book it's at 29 atmospheres and the gravity is insane. The ammonia-based atmosphere is touched on then left alone because once it was stated there wasn't much else to talk about. Rocky was bouncing around on Grace's ship because he was essentially under no gravity as far as he could tell.

Rocky had been at Tau Ceti, alone, for 46 years before Grace showed up. They did not give this number in the movie and that's good. People who find out from the book have a whole new sense of sadness for Rocky.

The book goes way into what Grace figures out and/or assumes about Rocky's physiology. Part of it is when they sleep, they're completely helpless. That's why someone watches them. They need someone to keep them safe. Now think about not having that for 46 years after everyone else on his ship died for reasons he didn't know. The movie touches on this with more of a food coma aspect which keeps it light(er) but the stuff in the book is dark.

Rocky doesn't impose himself on Grace in the book. They decide he should move over there because that's where the science is done and science is going to fix the problem. The changes to Grace's ship are discussed and he helps where he can. There's a respect there that they take out of the movie because it changes the entire texture of the relationship and it doesn't really change the story.

When Rocky breaks out of his ball to save Grace when the ship is spinning out of control it's a lot worse. Grace gets pretty seriously burned getting Rocky back into his area and then almost kills him by trying to help him. The movie shows a small scar on Grace's arm from that situation and doesn't do anything with the "almost killed Rocky by trying to help even though he had no idea what to do" thing.

The rest of the changes are in the ending of the story. Grace only knows that his sun is getting brighter because Rocky said the scientists told him. That gives the assumption that things aren't going to get worse on Earth but he has no idea how bad they got.

They do have a bubble dome for him on Erid but the insanely high gravity is still there and so is the pitch blackness around his bubble. He doesn't have that bright and airy seaside home like in the movie. He's got a yurt in the darkness. He's suffering from the high gravity and still has some residual effects from only having taumeba to eat after his food runs on on the trip to Enid. He had it rough since he made his choice.

And then there's the food thing. This one is something people have definite opinions on. Some say it should have been included, some don't. There's one source of protein Grace can eat on that planet and it's him. They took some samples and cloned his muscles. He calls them "meburgers" because he's literally eating his cloned self. He also says they're pretty good. It's a great scientific insert but so not in keeping with the movie.

Overall they took the darker aspects out of the book, in a lot of ways, and left them out of the movie. They simplified the science by skimming rather than delving. They used their time to show, not tell.

This is why they call it an adaptation. They took what would work in a visual medium with a fixed length of time and chose what they felt would make the best story, while keeping as true as possible to the source. The book and the movie are two different things and if you treat them that way you'll get a much wider story than if you only consume one or expect to have everything in one medium.

They Will Kill You - My Take (Spoilers)

 

I was interested in this one from the trailers and it was the Scream Unseen for the week so hey, I didn't have to use an extra slot to see it. Nice.

I'm kind of sad to say it's another formulaic campy horror movie. They tried, I think. They tried to add unique elements that would set it apart but nope, it didn't happen. The foreshadowing is pretty heavy from the start and they don't deviate.

The story is that Maria takes a job at a high end hotel(?) as a housekeeper. Her first night they, well, try to kill her. The backstory is that Maria and her younger sister Asia were abused by their father, Maria shot him in kind of self defense, served time, lost track of her little sister, and took the job through deception to get her back. To summarize that - big sister Maria is there to get little sister Asia back. I don't know exactly why she had to go to these measures to do it but hey, maybe because the staff lives on-site? Dunno. Sets up the location.

That first night they do indeed try to kill her. There was a warning written on the mirror by the maintenance guy (assumed) that showed up in the shower steam but was gone when she got out of the shower. Oddly enough when they do start coming through the walls (there's a convenient hole in the wall behind the small refrigerator in the room) she pulls a very large knife out of her bag and goes to town. They've got pig faces which turn out to be masks as they chastise each other because she escaped.

That's the setup. They're chasing her through the building.

But wait - these guys heal from everything. They're incapacitated for a bit, but then they're back. The extra bit of the story is that they're all immortal. There's an exposition spouting housekeeper with a fake Irish accent you can float bowling balls on telling her everything from the moment she walked in the door.

Speaking of that. She showed up at the place saying she's the new housekeeper, using the fake name. The housekeeper asks to see her ID, then shows her in. Her cell phone is taken as a matter of procedure. She's introduced to some of the guests/residents/whatever they are that are in the lobby. She's shown her room, seeing things like the breakroom as they go by. Then she's in for the night. My logical mind wondered if the real person had already done the whole HR thing of paperwork or if that's just ignored because they're going to kill her so no need to pay her, right?

Now the chase is on. She's going to try to find her sister while she's being hunted by the immortal people who want to kill her. There's many reviews that reference Tarantino because she's barefoot through the entire movie. It's not a "Die Hard" concept where there's problems with it. She just is. So someone had a fetish or they wanted to show something that escapes my grasp.

There's many a fight and would-be kill. There's a humorous aspect of one woman's head being blown off (she brought a double barrel short shotgun too) and her eyeball wandering around on its own reporting back. So lots and lots of blood and gore, even the classic beheading with the blood spraying to the ceiling. I told you they stuck to the camp horror formula.

She finds her little sister. A very minor detail from earlier in the movie comes back to show that her little sister has decided to join them rather than be killed. The minor detail is a pair of earrings shown earlier now worn by the little sister. The woman who's place big sister took was to be her sacrifice and entry into the immortal club. Whoopsie.

The little sister is all caught up on her big sister leaving her with the abusive dad. It's not like the big sister had much choice after being put in prison for trying, and failing, to kill the abusive dad when they were on the run but hey, had to have a reason why little sister is upset. This is now part of the interactions as they both run to try to get out. Again, not really tight writing.

Big sister gets caught. They bring her up to the top level where, gasp, there's an alter to Satan/some demon. Big big surprise since the original pan down the building at the beginning of the movie shows a red window in the attic with a pentagram. Not subtle at all.

The thing here is you write your name on the pig-head-on-a-stick, make your sacrifice, do some kind of soul pledge, and you're immortal. There's a ceremony where they bring the demon to inhabit said pig head. It's "alive" and kinda nasty. It's also covered in names. There's a rather nice fluorite terminated crystal hanging from its ear as a writing implement. The fact I noticed this tells you how much the rest of the movie kept my attention.

The next setup is that little sister goes forward, writes her name, then kills herself. That seems to be unprecedented because it sets up a major fight scene. Big sister conveniently and expertly slices off the piece of skin with her sister's name on it during the fight. There's the standard hooks hanging from chains, poles set into the floor, etc. for mayhem to occur. The demon is not happy about being stuck on the stick so the housekeeper jams the pig head on her own head so big sister is fighting the housekeeper with the pig head.

Sigh.

Big sister has a lighter and lights up the housekeeper (after she's impaled on one of those handy floor poles) which also burns the pig head. That burns the names which makes the immortals, currently in various states of impalement, mortal. All fall down.

The sisters get away and the skin doesn't have the little sister's name on it. At some point one of them changed it to the big sister's name. I think it was before the fighting really started. I dunno. The skin is still there and squirming in her hand as they leave the flaming remains of the building.

I'm tired of the Satanic premise so many of these movies use. It's getting tiring. It's lazy. They can't think up something so hey, let's make them devil worshipers. Woo! High fives all around the writing table. I can't complain too much because it's part of the formula.

If you like campy horror this won't disappoint. The lead actress is better than you'd expect and I hope she gets some better roles in her near future. No one else in the thing deserves more.

Slanted - My Take (Spoilers)

 

This was a Screen Unseen and I'd never seen a trailer for this. I was truly going in with no idea what this would be about but it was pretty obvious by the title and by the opening scene.

This is the story of a Chinese family and the daughter trying to fit into a not-really-that-wrong parody of America. The names of some of the stores were a freaking riot. The AR-15 Food Market got me.

They arrive in the town when Joan is eight years old and on her first day of school someone gives her the slant eyes insult. She has the Chinese lunch her mother packed for her mocked so she dumps it out.

Smash cut to her in high school. She trades lunches with her Desi friend so they're both happy. I'm not sure where mom works and dad works as a house cleaner. They both speak Chinese at home and very limited English where needed. Joan speaks perfect English.

The popular girls at school are the pale blondes. All of them. Even a chubby one. There's a single very popular one who the rest gravitate around. Joan has the longing looks for them and there's a hallway of fame for homecoming kings and queens, all the cleancut American guys and every single girl pale with long blonde hair.

She decides to run for homecoming queen, even with her Desi friend trying to talk her down. Things are going lackluster until her dad gets hurt at work and she has to fill in for cleaning. The popular girls see her and that's the end of her homecoming queen aspirations. She even tries dying her hair blonde herself but it's not a success so she's got a big patch of black roots and orange chunks.

Online she's been using filters that change her to be the white blonde she wants to be. Every time she does she gets a message from the company that makes them that she's a high percentage user, that she's important to them, etc. Then she gets a message that's a one hour limited offer to go to their office and after some debate she does. The storefront is an abandoned barber shop but the logo is on the window and going through the debris of the previous store she ends up in a bright and shiny lobby.

She's offered the chance to become what she wants to be - white. The doctor shows her video of the success stories. In fact he'll give her a freebie permanent hair color change. She walks out with nice blonde hair and the paperwork she needs a parent to sign because she's underage. It states very clearly, and the doctors says it as well, that the change is permanent.

She lies to her mother and says it's a form for a field trip and goes the next day to have the procedure done. The movie skips over any and all science for this process, and that makes it more believable. Joan of pure Chinese descent walks in, Joan of pure white descent walks out. There is now a different actress playing the character.

Her parents have no idea who she is and it takes persuading to get them to realize it is her. They're appalled at what she did and there's some touching dialogue later from her father about how he looked at her and saw his mother, etc. But that's not where this movie goes. They do go back to the clinic and tell the doctor they didn't agree to it and change it back. He points it that it's permanent and shows them the door.

She takes on a new name at the school and starts over. The popular girls take to her and THE popular girl pulls her into her orbit. She's got what she's wanted - she gets white privilege and she fits in. Her Desi friend is also appalled and asks if she thinks she's ugly. Valid question. During this time she's had a few patches of skin flake and peel off.

Her skin starts to sag and show some of her original skin tone. When she goes back to the clinic there's now a huge line and she's told she can see the doctor far out in the future. They give her some cream and tape to deal with the problem until then.

She gets nominated for homecoming queen by the top girl herself, who's going to be too busy shooting a TV show to do it herself. During this time there's more slippage. She runs into the bathroom and is followed by the top girl. Unexpectedly she helps with the tape to hide the damage and tells her that her original face will fight the change for a while. Well then.

She's invited to dinner at the top girl's house to find out both her and her father had the procedure, her mother chose not to and isn't in their lives anymore. The house is completely white and beige, a not very subtle showing for the situation.

When she gets home Joan sees more of her skin slipping and flaking. She starts pulling and digging. There's piles of what are meant to be bloody skin on the makeup table as she looks for her old face. It ends with her holding her hand over her new face and half of her old face showing.

This isn't subtle and it's not meant to be. However it's also poorly written and too long. Others have said it could have been, and should have been, a Twilight Zone episode. I really have to wonder how hard up the studios are for non-comic book movies when I see a lot of what's been on the big screen. The concept here is good. The execution is bad.

The funny thing is I don't see this as ever being shown in my city. This is so not the audience for this movie.

Undertone - My Take (Spoilers)

I stay away from online trailers and reviews before seeing a movie. I like the trailers in the theater and that's how I decide what I'm probably going to see. This one intrigued me and I couldn't avoid a blurb that said it was actually scary. That sold me.

The movie is about a pair of podcasters who do a show about the paranormal. Evy is the sceptic, Justin (voice only) is the believer. Yup. Got a Scully and Mulder thing going on here without the sexual tension aspect. It seems to be popular enough because they get fan mail and have been doing it for a while. Justin is in London so that means they record it at 3am her time.

During pre-show talk Justin brings up a different situation where someone who seems to be an influencer did something that because viral where a bunch of people cut off their ears and mailed them to her before killing themselves. Evy brings up the site to mess with him and it's a disturbing image of a screaming woman on a red background with a sound playing. She leaves it up long enough for him to yell at her to stop.

Evy lives with her mother and is her mother's caretaker. Her mom is end of life. She's tucked away in her bedroom, under smooth sheets and blankets. She's just lying there, breathing. The house is full of religious trappings and I do mean full of them. Lots of pictures, crucifixes, candles, statues, etc. They're in pretty much every shot in the movie.

Justin gets an email with ten audio clips from a random letter email address and some cryptic words. Being who they are they decide to play them and discuss.

The movie does suspense well. They stay away from the tropes and there isn't a single jump scare in the whole thing even though they set it up to think there will be. They do have images in the background as needed and they're indistinct enough to make them creepier than if they were shown. The sound was incredibly done where it's mixing the sound from the clips to the sound in the house. Cinematography had framing so well done it was both unnoticed and right in your face. Technically I'd like to say this film should be up for minor to mid-level awards.

As they listen to the clips things get progressively unhinged in what they're listening to. What went from simple proof that the woman talks in her sleep turns into more and more unexplained things. Evy also starts experiencing unexplained things that involve her and her mother.

The plot settles onto demonic possession and a relatively obscure demon who has a problem with babies, causing miscarriages, stillbirths, and mothers doing unspeakable things to their babies. Just before that starts being involved Evy finds out she's pregnant.

This is where the oddness happens from a viewer standpoint. She calls her doctor to schedule a pregnancy test instead of going to the dollar store and getting a test. The doctor calls back just before they start a 3am taping to tell her she's six weeks pregnant. Then the next clip they listen to has a baby crying.

Evy keeps finding things out of place. A statue shows up on her mother's bedside table and shows up again after she put it in a drawer. A painting over her mother's bed is askew. She finds her mother out of bed after she's gone out for an evening/night even though mom is in an end of life coma. We see her mother move in the background when something odd is happening to Evy.

The reason I bring up the sound is that it's so well mixed. When they're listening to banging on the walls in a clip the sound is on the right side of the theater. Then there's an occasional one on the left before going back to the right. It's a way to try to figure out if it's all in the clip or if there's stuff happening in the house. Evy notices something's wrong but doesn't know what.

The audio clips start Justin down the path of old nursery rhymes, what they meant, and that there may be hidden meanings if played backwards. Yup. The classic "play them backwards for the real meaning" thing. She doesn't hear anything in them, he does. Considering the movie opens with her singing a nursery rhyme to her mother it ties in well.

There's the obligatory flickering lights that Evy does not wisely unplug, given that she's living in an older house and flickering lights tend to be a sign of A Bad Think Happening with the Electricity. That bothered me as a bit of a lack of real world impact. Lights do turn off and on at crucial moments, like during a clip when something is said. It's overall building the suspense.

Evy is doodling with crayons. She took them out of the drawer in her mother's nightstand when she put the statue in there the first time and you can see a kind of disturbing drawing in black and red crayon. Her doodles are getting more elaborate as time progresses.

Jeremy doesn't want to listen to the last two clips. He's tried to answer the email but the address was deleted. He's done research and found out that the name of the aforementioned demon is in the email address (backwards) and that they are hearing it more and more in the clips. The voice of reason is overridden and they seem to have a regular live broadcast when people call in.

The callers are all about the people in the clips. The first caller says they're from the same city Evy lives in, brings up how the house was full of drawings of dead children on the walls, and they were both dead at the bottom of the stairs. The next caller seems to be trying to warn them not to listen to any more of the clips but static cuts him off. The next one describes a horrific child murder but doesn't have any useful details like when or where. The last caller is talking about how she's a horrible mother and sounds like she's going to drown her child.

The two of them work hard to convince her not to do it. Evy kind of breaks here and says she killed her mother but it's more of her not praying with her than an active role. This is where the movie breaks down.

The sound is loud enough that it's difficult to hear the various things happening at the end. The visuals are chaotic enough that it's difficult to see important things but they do show just enough of some of them, I will say that. With those two mixed up it's tough to follow the last few minutes.

Evy's house is going nuts. The TV has the image from that viral thing and she can't turn it off. It turns out it isn't even plugged in. The light bulbs are popping all over the house. As she turns you can see black and red crayon drawings over all the walls. The table where she sat while recording her podcast is covered in drawings, especially one that's multiple pages. There's flashes of faces in plastic bags. When she goes up to check on her mother the bed is empty, neatly made, and the statue she kept moving is in the middle. The last thing we get to see is her mother walking towards her from the bathroom behind her. The last thing we hear are screams and thumps.

And this is where it ends.

We get no closure. This is the same thing that happened with "Iron Lung". All buildup, no payoff. Leaving the ending to the audience's imagination is a cop out to me. I did not spend all that time getting invested in the movie only for them to pull the rug out from under me at the end.

There's a lot of different interpretations of the ending on the internet. Go figure. I'm going to get past my dislike for the concept to give some thoughts on it myself.

The audio clips seemed to match Evy's descent into whatever the heck she descended into. They paired up with events in her home and in her own life. There's an interesting bit early on where there's an off-camera voice telling her how to tell when her mother is finally dying. One reviewer noted that the signs the voice gave actually happened at the beginning of the movie and all the scenes with her mother were either in her head or the demonic entity animating her - take your pick.

The last scenes we have are the house in total disarray and not at all what we'd seen until that point. The laptop is buried under papers when the last time she was "normal" she was using it. The kitchen has the table and chairs on the ceiling rather than the floor. The walls, which were fine until now, were now covered in those drawings. There was .. something smeared on the kitchen counters. Someone mentioned there was a creepy baby or doll on top of the refrigerator. All the cabinet doors are open. The only tidy space was her mother's room.

So yeah. Go with whatever ending you want since they weren't strong enough to give us one on their own. I still consider that lazy writing. They spent all that time doing a great job building suspense and then lost it when they ended the movie on ambiguity.

If you like suspense, go ahead and see it. That's well done indeed. If you want a full movie with an ending, you may want to skip it. I will admit to tensing up as things progressed because they were so well into building suspense without releasing it in things like jump scares and big plot drops. It wasn't interesting enough for me to go to see it again and find all the key points where the audio clips may have meshed with what was going on with Evy.

We never do know what happens to Jeremy, if anything. He sounds distressed but it's so late in the movie there's no way to tell if it's really him or in her head. So we don't get closure with him either. Another annoyance for me.

The Bride! - My Take (Spoilers)

 

I was forced to see this one twice because after I'd seen it my movie buddy said they wanted to see it, so off we went. Notice the word "forced".

I wanted to see this from the first time I saw the trailers. It looked like an interesting, modern take on the Bride of Frankenstein with a Bonnie and Clyde vibe. Those weren't something I would have mixed personally but then again I'm not a screenwriter.

Frankenstein's monster has a name in this movie - Frankenstein. Let's leave all the debate about that situation aside because it really doesn't matter. He's assumed the name here so that's who he is. In a tiny way it's him claiming part of himself because his creator didn't bother to name him. The fact that he takes on the name of his abuser (that's what Dr. Frankenstein really was) actually does a bit to set up the character, but more on that later.

He shows up in Chicago to visit a scientist he's been writing and who hasn't been writing back. This scientist writes about "reinvigorating", the term used instead of reanimating. It seems like it's a way to modernize the situation but keep the word in mind. Frank is there to get himself a companion.

The doctor is not what he expects - it's a woman. There's the classic back-and-forth where Frank talks to her about how he's been writing the doctor and he hasn't written back. The doctor reveals herself to him and takes the time to talk to him. She's not thrilled with his idea of reinvigorating a woman for himself and wants him there to study for her own reasons.

But I've skipped the beginning! This is where things take a supernatural twist. The spirit of Mary Shelley is still hanging around and is upset about all the stories she didn't get to write. Not just the ones she meant to write but the ones she couldn't write because of the times in which she lived. This is where the feminist motif starts and it doesn't leave the movie. Mary is looking for a way to tell her story of the bride for her monster, and needs someone in the real world to use for that.

OK. I'm back on track now.

Ima is a party girl who hangs out with the local Chicago mafia. She's doing just that when Mary starts intruding into her head and suddenly Ima is rattling off large synonyms and talking out of turn about the mob boss, who's at the next table. Two of the goons at her table take her away as she makes a scene. As rather expected, she dies what could be termed a natural death if you think of "gravity is natural" because she's pushed down a flight of stairs.

The fall down the stairs is done in multiple shots. She breaks her ankle but even with multiple bongs to the coconut she doesn't seem to break her neck. The last shot of her in this incarnation is splayed at the bottom of the stairs.

Frank persuades the doctor to do what he wants. Mostly it seems she just wants an excuse to do it. She seems to feel that Frank is substandard work and wonders why his creator stitched him together from spare parts rather than use one body. Frank suggests it was a bunch of research in one go. This doctor decides that one body is enough, thank you very much.

The obligatory "dig up the body" scene has them getting Ima out of the ground. She's not in a coffin and still wearing the clothing she had on when she died. This is a blip in the matrix because we don't know how long she was down there and she's suspiciously fresh, unless the doctor somehow had an in with whoever runs the pauper's graves. We'll leave that alone.

When they get her back to the lab (third floor of a very nice corner house) Frank gets upset saying "she's too beautiful". I have no idea why this would be a problem unless he felt she couldn't handle his appearance? The doctor, bless her heart, gets snippy asking what she's supposed to do with a fresh corpse and if he expects her to find another woman for him. That ends the argument.

Her method uses black fluid. It's injected through the veins and bumped with electricity. At least that's what it seems happens. Ima is hooked up to IVs, several tubes into her chest, and some kind of metal scale chest piece. The doctor doesn't wait for lightning - she's hooked into the municipal power system to draw what she needs. Modern measures!

Anyway. Glug glug zap. And we get a reinvigorated Ima. To be more accurate, we get a reinvigorated woman with a broken ankle who doesn't know who she is. Mary Shelley is still hanging around tho so there's that. The doctor is pleased, Frank is pleased, Ima is confused. The doctor fits a very large iron cage around her broken ankle that she doesn't seem to feel. I'm guessing the reinvigoration process doesn't include healing stuff.

One thing of note is Ima's hair. When she's alive it's in a conventional hairstyle. After she's thumped down the stairs it's fanned out. When she's reinvigorated it's big. Seems like her hair shows her breaking the rules of society. At least I'll say that. I'll also continue to call her Ima until later.

Ima immediately shows that she's her own person with her own mind. The doctor wants them both to hang around to be studied. Frank is completely hot to have his bride. Ima wants to do whatever the hell she wants. Frank seems infatuated by her independence.

Frank takes her out on the town. They find an underground club of some kind. Ima starts having a lot of fun, leading on a couple of guys to think that it means they can have their fun with her. She objects, Frank objects strenuously, a photographer is around and gets their picture, the cops show up to deal with the aftermath of Fran's strenuous objection. The cops are the ones that continue through the movie - a detective and his female partner, who's not a detective but seems to do all the detective work he's getting credit for.

Note that any of the black on Ima doesn't wash off, or they don't try but let's go with the fact it's permanent stains. At the club in the bathroom someone mentions her tat and she doesn't correct them. They seem less impressed when she shows her black tongue. Note that the amount of black on her tongue varies through the movie but I won't bother about that since it's a hard thing to do with makeup to give her a black tongue and white teeth.

Frank is obsessed with a musical movie star. This is where the movie goes a little off the rails because he sees himself in the movies and so do we. It's a recurring theme and starts to include Ima as the movie progresses. If I were an artsy movie person I'd say it was because he wanted to escape his life by escaping into the magic world of the movies but that's so overdone I'll let you take or keep that as you like.

Let's get back to this.

The two of them head across country after the newspaper prints their picture and the police are looking for them. For reasons unknown they choose New York as their destination. Travel is a combination of stealing cars and riding in train cars. Early during the trip they're on a train car, Frank is very familiar with how to get away with this, Ima screws that up and ends up getting a police officer killed when he falls/is pushed out of the moving car. That brings the detectives back into the mix.

While in New York Frank shows her how to get money by taking it from various fountains. They're holed up in what seems to be an abandoned hotel and they're in the empty swimming pool. It's not a bad place since it's not like anyone looking in the windows will see them. Ima tries getting "friendly" with him, he declines. She gets a bit miffed about that but rolls with the situation.

For whatever reason women are starting to take up the makeup and freedom they perceive in Ima across the country. They're painting on the black mark on their face, picking up weapons, and making it clear that they're not putting up with stuff anymore. As I said I'm not exactly sure how this got to be a movement but it is.

They are going to the movies as they travel, always starring the same actor Frank adores. The female detective figures this out and they she looks up the places that are showing his movies. There's one in New York so they decide to stake it out. It's a good call because Frank is dragging Ima to go to it, she's bored with seeing the same movies, and takes him to a 3D zombie movie. Note - my movie buddy had a big issue with this since he said that 3D movies weren't invented yet but a quick Wikipedia search shows that yes, it could have happened.

During the movie a couple in the seats in front of Ima is doing some groping, the woman keeps saying no, the man keeps groping. She tells him to leave her alone. The crowd looks, sees the two of them, recognizes them from the newspaper articles that have been continuing to be printed, and panic out of the theater. The movie is showing the two of them as zombie monster during this little scene. They run out with the crowd.

As they're trying to get back to their place they go through a hotel kitchen and into the ballroom. Ima is slick enough to grab a tray and pretend to be a server. Frank catches on, flips his coat around so the light lining shows, and grabs his own tray. Here's where things go wrong and weird. It just so happens that the actor he loves is in the crowd and he finds him. Ima is working her way out, as she should. Frank goes into scary overzealous fanboy and the whole thing ends up as some sort of weird dance sequence to - get this - "Putting on the Ritz". It's a bad dance sequence, by the way.

The police arrive in force. Ima gets one of their guns. Confusion ensues. She ends up non-fatally shooting one of them who doesn't listen to instructions by his own commander. She rightly blames him. She also recognizes the male detective and shoots him for good measure. She does a monologue during all this and brings up the Chicago mobster by name.

This is where she starts to get really confused. She's three people now. She's Mary Shelley. She's Penelope, the name Frank has given her along with a completely made up history between them. She's Ima who's starting to rise back out of her memories. Turns out the detective she shot was one who was on the mafia boss's payroll and also using women like her to get information. Many of those women had been discovered and disposed of by the mob boss, who kept their tongues. She doesn't like the detective.

Here's an interlude where the two of them get, ahem, intimate. Frank finally gets what he wants and it really isn't just the sex. He wanted intimacy and companionship. And sex. He's got them all in his reinvigorated amnesiac partner.

The mobster gets wind of what she said, chides the two men who killed her the first time, kills one of them who got a little too defensive, and sends the other one off to finish the job. This time he's supposed to bring back her tongue. Since the mob boss knows his family situation and that's never a good thing, off he goes.

This is where the Bonnie and Clyde aspect showed in the trailers because of them driving around, her having the revolver, the two of them being a couple. Sadly this is not the case. She figures out Frank has been spinning tales about the two of them to suit his own desires, right down to telling her what her name is. He gets that tattooed on his chest above the big scar that also goes across his chest. The break in the ballroom is letting Ima memories return so she's rightly peeved. She's going to ditch him in the middle of a field but a police car makes her decide that's not a good idea.

They don't go back to the abandoned hotel, which the detectives find. They head out again. The male detective had called back to his station and was giving up his badge, but only if he got to choose his replacement. Yes. He gives his badge to the female detective. Not exactly how that all works but hey, reality doesn't figure much into a movie like this. Now she's at least got a badge to show.

I'll try to wrap things up here.

While at a drive in movie Frank and Ima/Penelope get into a fight. She's got three women inside her noggin and she's working out who she is now. She doesn't want to be any of them so she decides she's going to be The Bride. Frank drawls out that she's the Bride of Frankenstein. She corrects him - she's just The Bride. He likes that even more. She comes around to saying she loves him, at which time he's promptly shot through the head by a local police officer or maybe the guy trying to kill her. I'm uncertain at this point and it doesn't really matter.

Car chase and she gets him back to Chicago to have the doctor reinvigorate him. The doctor takes them in but is only going to study him, not bring him back. She gets a nice speech about how her and her husband were playing around with the aspects of her/their work and went a little too far. That's when she found out about how when someone is brought back they don't have any memory of who they were. She had to "put him down" when that was clear. Um. Wow. Ok.

The Bride isn't having any of that. She's still got the gun and demands that Frank be brought back. The detective has followed them along with local police. The local police do what they do to monsters - lots of gunfire which does no damage to the equipment in the room, thank goodness. The female detective gets them to stop and gets them out of the room so the doctor and her maid (who's got the black mark on her face now) can get themselves in order. Gotta love using societal norms against someone.

The Bride is now lying on top of Frank's body on the operating table. The female detective tells the doctor to take all the time she needs, looking pointedly at the two bodies before leaving. As they're all on the street you see the bright light in that top room. Frank and The Bride's hands move and they end up holding hands.

Not quite done yet!

The same restaurant where the mob boss ordered Ima's second death is full of women with the black mark on their face and blunt force weapons. The glass jars of preserved human tongues (they were in the background of the other scene there as well) have been spilled open across his table. We close with them turning his face to show that they've tattooed a black mark on him.

Wow. A lot of movie. Too bad there's not a lot of content to go with it.

The dance scenes were horrible. Simply horrible. If it had just been dancing it would have fit in to a certain extent. But they were big choreographed numbers centering on Frank and Ima/Penelope. There was no point to them except to have big choreographed dance numbers.

The power dynamic between Frank and Mary/Ima/Penelope/The Bride was interesting in that she was the dominant partner. Being four people in one body may have helped but Frank was always portrayed as more of a follow along than a leader. That makes sense because he spent his life hiding and just getting by. She was someone who was making something of her life and she continued after death.

The gangs of women taking up the call were again not really clear. I know it's a display of women throwing off their shackles and using the visible black symbol on their faces to show it. It follows the feminist theme of the movie so we'll go with that. Having the women get back at the mob boss was simply a good way to tie that string off.

I don't recommend seeing this movie. I honestly don't. It's a mess. It has too many things it thinks it wants to do but it doesn't commit to any of them. I'd say that there's a lot that could have been done but really, no. The original concept of the bride was her realizing what was done to her and burning it all to the ground. Here they have her partnering up with the monster and letting her own monster out. Too bad it's not interesting to watch it happen. The character development goes wonky when they have to keep shoehorning in all the different people she was.

Scream 7 - My Take (Spoilers)

 

With the previous six Scream movies fresh in my mind it was time to see Scream 7. On IMAX even.

One thing I like about the Scream franchise is that there's no singular "bad guy". It's a role that various and sundry bad guys take on. That makes the movies more than just horror with some comedy. It adds a "whodunit" aspect where you're really trying to figure out who Ghostface is and why they're doing what they're doing.

The general formula is that it's some connection to people in the past. Generally. I think they broke that in one of the movies that really aren't Scream movies. But overall the reason(s) are revealed in the third act even if they aren't something that could be guessed from the rest of the movie. It's more a reveal than a mystery but what do you expect? It's a Scream movie.

This one felt like a comfortable continuation of the first ones and I found out that's because it's the same writer for the first, second, and fourth movies. They took on the directing role this time as well because Wes Craven is dead and the originally chosen director dropped out due to death threats. I guess people take the Scream franchise seriously. And the guy who took the director role probably decided it couldn't get much worse for them because they were already the writer.

Most of the movie slides right into the feel of the original four movies. They kept the bigger, more emphatic kills from the last two but I'm guessing that's to keep up with the times. Overall the movies have been comparatively restrained when it comes to the actual blood and gore aspect. Lots of stabbity stabbity but not a lot of results. You get more results in this one.

The trailers for the movie were all fakeouts. I find that amusing. What's in the trailers happened but not like you'd expect. The one with Ghostface burning the house down? Happened. But it's the original house that was turned into a tourist AirBnB and in the opening scene you have the first kill being the couple who booked it, then Ghostface burned it down. I guess that could be an allegory for cutting ties with aspects of the movies that came before. Sure. Go with that.

This one does cut ties tho. The meta aspect that was building in the first four is cut back to almost nothing and I think that's a good thing. By the fourth movie it was starting to get tired. The fake "Stab" movie franchise is still part of the Scream universe but they make fun of it and how it's getting tired too. By taking that out they were able to move the location to where Sidney lives now and while the original Woodsboro is referenced it's not the center of the universe anymore. This gives them freedom to move around more. The rules that every movie to date that the characters listed was also started and cut as being lame, so another homage to the originals while moving beyond them.

We're down to two of the original actors since they killed off Dewey/David Arquette. Neve wisely bowed out of the sixth movie which makes Courtney the only one who's been in all seven movies. Well. The actor who is the voice of Ghostface has been in all of them too and the continuity is great but not being on the screen and using a voice modulator means that it's less obvious that it's the same one. Both of them are producers now so either they believe in the franchise or they wanted the extra money. Regardless they're back in character.

Time has moved on. Sidney has stepped out of the limelight and has been raising her family in a small town and running a coffee shop. Gale lost her big New York gig, hasn't written any more books, and is trying to get back into the reporter groove. The two younger kids are staying with grandparents and are no part of the movie. The newest character is Sidney's daughter Tatum (named for the Tatum that died in the first movie). The daughter is being a typical teenager and has issues with her mom not talking about her life previous to being married. It's kind of a plot hook because I don't think many teenage girls give a good gosh darn what mom was like when they were teenagers.

She's married to a police officer. He doesn't get a lot of screen time but that's what happens when you're not an essential character. 

The teenage guy next door is obsessed with the whole Ghostface thing and puts Sidney on the spot a couple of times, with his mom breaking it up. Tatum has a boyfriend, very similar to how Sidney did at the beginning. There's a friend group again, similar to the first movie.

This movie is unique in that there's three Ghostfaces in action. One is also more of a fakeout and a plot advance but there's two active ones working together. Of course, given that we're used to two Ghostfaces (except in Scream 3 but there's fan speculation about a second one that got left out of the final cut) having one killed early means we might think there's only one more out there. Another fakeout for us!

The whole thing starts up with Sidney getting a call from Stu, who is supposed to be dead. He was always an iffy one rife with theories that he wasn't really dead. And darn it all if he isn't on the phone talking about things that happened and what he's going to do. Gail shows up with the twins from the Scream 6 movie right about now, actually running over the first Ghostface.

The first Ghostface to die is unconnected to anything and is an escaped mental patient. Sidney and Gail go to the mental hospital to try to figure out what's going on and the friendly nurse tells them the guy hadn't seen the Stab movies or had any interest in the original events. But there was a John Doe he spent a lot of time with who was there for a couple of decades and recently left. He even shows them the nice tidy room where he stayed. They show him Stu's picture, he recognizes him as the John Doe. OK. We've now got our link! It helps that the other guy had drawings resembling stuff from Scream/Stab/Sidney on his bulletin board yet.

I had to look up the kill count because there's also survivors so it messes with things in my head.

The boyfriend is sus and ends up on the floor. The friends end up getting picked off one by one. The obsessed guy is also a kill but that one has a bit of extra to it I'll get to in the Ghostfaces. There's also the two unrelated people who get it in the beginning but that's kind of a hallmark of the movies to have some initial kills so they don't really count so much. There's six kills, not counting Ghostfaces.

Here's the survivors.

Gale takes a hit and survives. 

Gale brings two characters back from Scream 6 as her crew and while they get attacked, they survive.

Sidney's husband takes a lot of hits and survives.

Sidney takes some hits and survives.

I want to say Sidney's daughter Tatum takes a hit or two, maybe a slice, but don't quote me on that one. If she didn't she should have.

As with all survivors they get minimal medical care and function just fine with various and sundry stab, bullet, and slash wounds except where the script requires that they don't. That's a consistent thing in every single movie so it's barely worth mentioning anymore.

Ghostface deaths

Now we get into the "why" aspect of the movie. It's always about why these people put on the mask, sparkly robe, and boots. Yes, people have identified, or tried to identify, the various brands and models of boots in each movie. They need hobbies too.

Ghostface 0

The first one, and the first one to get killed, is the stalking horse. He's got no real motive except being primed to kill the whole family in residence (remember, only the daughter is at home) and botches it.

Ghostface 1

This one took me a bit to recognize but he's the helpful nurse from the mental hospital. He's the one who primed the escapee to try to do the work. He's the one who had them looking for Stu.

Ghostface 2

This is another one from left field. It's the neighbor mom with the obsessed kid. Turns out the mom was even more obsessed with being the new Scream Queen, kind of infected her son with her own obsession, and wants Sidney to finally die because it's just stupid she's survived so much. It's confirmed she killed her own kid. Even if that turns out not to be her it was her accomplice.

Ghostface Kills

Ghostface 0 - Gale's van does an excellent job of it.

Ghostface 1 - As is proper etiquette with a Ghostface, shot to the head. He also gets body shots from Tatum but when she's wavering about the proper shot to the head he escapes.

Ghostface 2 - This one gets the long fight scene, many stabs, and a final lot of shots to the head by both Sidney and Tatum.

So what about Stu? There's a scene in Sidney's very smart house which is full of screens which has him there and then morphing into other characters from the past, including the beloved Dewey. They're taunting her with how easy it was to manipulate her. Of course they never confirm that Stu is really dead or not so there's that. Or maybe they did. It was late in the movie. But the AI thing is part of what they're doing, which fits in with the movies moving along with current technology.

We end with Sidney telling Tatum the story of why she got her name. It's quite obvious what skills her mother has when it comes to evading masked killers in weird robes. There's also a bit where Gale grows a heart and lets the twin take the microphone for the story instead of keeping it for herself like she did earlier. The twins are probably part of the franchise for at least one more movie.

I enjoyed it. Seeing it on IMAX isn't necessary but if you can and you want to pay the extra for the ticket, go nuts. It doesn't have anything that especially needs IMAX so go ahead and watch digital or wait for streaming. If you're going to marathon go right ahead and skip 5 and 6. The only thing you'll miss is the introduction of the twins with Gale. And Dewey's death but that's sad so you may want to skip it for that reason.