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In case you haven’t seen the intro from my entry dated
1/26/19 (it’s in my archives whenever you want to read it), I’m no longer going
to review every single movie I see. I’m
going to review one, with the occasional bonus, and just give ratings for the
rest from now on (unless I decide to pick it up again in the future). You can always ask me why I gave the ratings
for the films without reviews though (via comments or the e-mail addresses
under the ‘About Me’ section).
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Chilling Adventures of
Sabrina (Part 4) OK/G
I made it this far and this is seemingly the final season
(although that’s what they say now) of this slightly dark variation concerning
the teenage witch (played by Kiernan Shipka).
I wasn’t going to rewatch all three previous seasons before this, so I
just read the synopsis for each episode on Wikipedia; plus there’s a recap of
season three before the first episode, so I’m guessing what’s shown in that
recap is obviously the most important.
With the exception of season two (or part, as seasons are labeled for
this Netflix series), this series was fine enough for me (you can read my
reviews of the first three seasons/parts in the archives---www.abcreviewarchive.blogspot.com);
not fine in the sense I’ll buy a t-shirt, poster, or any other memorabilia promoting
the show, or join a Facebook group devoted to it, but fine in the sense I
enjoyed enough of it to kind of recommend and the only time I’ll ever discuss
it is if mentioned. I did watch all four
seasons/parts after all and the only time I truly felt like I forced myself to
continue was during season/part 2. This
part consisted of eight episodes, each one involving an Eldritch terror with
plans on destroying anyone and everything, not just this fictional town of
Greendale and its inhabitants. That did
make things a bit interesting in having a different terror each episode, but
the episodes are all roughly an hour (like the other seasons/parts) and
sometimes they actually feel so (TV episodes should rarely ever be an hour a
piece unless it’s an anthology show).
Like I said though, I never really felt like I forced myself to continue
after each episode. If they do actually
decide to end it here, and I think they should (lest it overstay its mild
welcome), I think it concluded fair enough, some might even say a bit poignantly. 1/2/2021
Bonus reviews:
Shortcut OK
A handful of teenagers are riding on a bus in the
countryside before being hijacked by an escaped prisoner with a gun after the
driver takes a (you guessed it…) shortcut.
[It’s an Italian film, but the accents say it might be England or
Scotland or somewhere in that region; it’s not really important wherever it
takes place though]. The prisoner is the
least of their worries when they eventually come across a creature that
resembles an alien vampire (imagine a distorted version of the vampire in The Night Flier, an underrated Stephen
King adaptation AND vampire movie).
Comparisons to Jeepers Creepers 2
are inevitable at first (I saw at least one Rotten Tomatoes reviewer mention
it), but the action eventually exits the bus as the characters escape to an
underground facility nearby. The first
half of this film seemed promising; the second half is where it loses steam and
gets a bit lame. I didn’t dislike this
film, it was okay (hence my rating), it just wasn’t ultimately as fun as other creature
features of yesteryear. 1/4/2021
House of Purgatory OK/G
Somehow this film from 2016 bypassed my radar. It’s not available on Netflix and it couldn’t
have been available at Redbox because I likely would’ve at least used a free
code to rent it, even if it sounded like a run-of-the-mill direct-to-video
title (which this one does). I came
across it after seeing a post on a page I follow on social media, as is often
the case for titles I’m unaware of, and saw that it was available on Tubi
(meaning free), so viewing it I did. In
it, a small group of people on Halloween decide to drive to a haunted house
that promises money for each level completed.
There’s certainly something shady about this place, as is often the case
in these movies. For one, they seem to
be the only car at the place on Halloween night (uh-huh) and the admission is
free since it’s Halloween night (uh-huh). Once inside, the deepest secrets are revealed
to each person and none of them are original at all, but this movie somehow
managed to keep my attention during its barely 75-minute runtime. Not a great film by any measure, but I sure
enjoyed it more than many other films that didn’t bypass my radar! 1/4/2021
Other
movies I've seen and their ratings (see above):
Alone (2020) >>>EH/OK
The Call (2020) >>>EH/OK
(dir. Timothy Woodward Jr.)
Koko-di Koko-da >>>EH
Love and Monsters >>>OK/G
Open Grave >>>EH/OK
The Platform >>>OK/G
(Netflix)
---Sean O.
1/5/2021
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