Blumhouse Productions, the company
named after Jason Blum and known mostly for producing horror movies such as Insidious, The Purge, and Paranormal
Activity (you can see their entire list if you Google them), recently
released 4 movies (another 4 are coming) exclusively to Amazon in a series
entitled ‘Welcome to the Blumhouse.’ I
got around to watching all 4 and here are their reviews in the order I watched
them…
The Lie EH/OK
A teenage girl admits to pushing her friend off a bridge and
both her parents cover it up for her the best they can. Now, titling this The Lie made me a bit suspicious from the get-go, but I was willing
to go along and was curious to where
it would all lead. There isn’t much to
this at all and it kind of has a Lifetime Channel feel to it, but it was kind
of able to sustain itself for a good portion and there is a dark undertone in
the grand scheme of things, but my initial presumptions ended up being true (as
they should be for any ardent movie watcher), thereby making it a worse film than
it already was. I expected better from
you Blumhouse, especially in 2020. 11/9/2020
Evil Eye EH
An East Indian woman living in New Orleans is constantly
hassled by her mother from India about meeting someone and getting
married. She eventually does meet
someone that appears too good to be true and her mother learns he’s connected
to her past, and not in a good way.
There’s nothing particularly special about this film other than depicting
realistic love-hate mother-daughter dynamics that are likely universal. Representation is great, but it doesn’t
always mean innovative (as evidenced here).
11/9/2020
Black Box OK/G
A man suffering from amnesia after an accident that claimed
his wife undergoes a specific type of treatment in which he’s able to return to
specific memories. It’s not like The Butterfly Effect where he can change
the memories and alter the present, just simply to try and recall certain
things vividly (he is given the ability to jump back and forth between these
memories). The reveal, after about the
hour mark, is nothing fresh and the film ultimately appeared to be overly
familiar, but this entry in the Blumhouse package wasn’t bad and didn’t end as
sappy as it could have. 11/10/2020
Nocturne EH
A girl at a music school commits suicide in the very
beginning. Another girl, seemingly
always in competition with her twin sister who both attend the same school,
obtains said girl’s notebook and Movies 101 would usually inform you that’s
probably not the best idea. This movie
is lame, containing nothing we haven’t seen before (jealousies, possible
curses, duplicitous characters) and threw no curveballs before the
straightforward (and expected) conclusion.
It felt like this may have been influenced a bit by Black Swan (several critics on Rotten Tomatoes also made the
comparison), but it failed immensely at being anywhere near as good. 11/10/2020
In conclusion: I read online that these four movies were
more drama than horror despite coming from a studio that predominantly produces
horror. I also read they were more along
the lines of suspense films. Okay, there
may have been some suspense throughout, but none (definitely) were horror,
psychological thrillers if anything, Black
Box adding sci-fi elements. I
would’ve been okay with them not being straight-up horror if they were actually
good movies (yes, as much as I love horror, I do like non-horror films!). Black
Box was really the only one of these four movies I thought was decent, but
even that I wouldn’t completely rave about.
Simply put, I would not have chosen any of these films to write a review
for if they weren’t part of a series attached to a popular horror production
company. As I mentioned in the intro
above, 4 more movies in this series are planned to be released within a year,
and, all I can say is, I hope they’re more on the horror side, or, at the very
least, better than this bunch overall. 11/10/2020
---Sean O.
11/12/2020
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