Tuesday, May 18, 2021

The Woman in the Window/The Strange House

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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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The Woman in the Window                                         EH
I didn’t realize this new Netflix movie based on a book of the same name was another remake of Rear Window.  There’s even a brief clip of the original Hitchcock film on a TV in the beginning (how’s that for subtlety?).  In it, an agoraphobic woman (played by Amy Adams) witnesses a murder across the street from her New York apartment.  No one believes her because there’s no proof and of course she could just be delusional since she takes medication.  In these films, she could either actually be delusional or is actually correct and isn’t believed until there’s actual proof.  After about midway, a “twist” is revealed in regards to her agoraphobia which is nothing new at all.  Since the movie wasn’t over yet, another “twist” was eventually revealed that wasn’t surprising in the least and didn’t make the movie any better.  In fact, the “twists” made the movie a whole lot worse since it started out with decent performances and a bit of a mystery that I was hoping wouldn’t end in clichés.  I know it’s hard to be original anymore, but this Hitchcockian psychological thriller just isn’t worth watching.  5/14/2021

The Strange House                                                      EH
This haunted house film recently released on Netflix comes from Austria (as research informed me) and is in German, so you know what that means---yes, you have to read subtitles if you don’t understand German, but I’m sure you can adjust the audio to English or whatever other language is available if you don’t mind poor dubbing.  It may start off a bit intriguing and it has its moments, but every cliché you can imagine is here.  Let’s see, a family moves into a new home in which a murder took place at one time, the ghosts of the victims have a message, a séance of sorts is performed, the wrong people are initially assumed to be villains…and the final reveal is as clichéd as it gets.  To top it all off, the ending was a little too sweet, and, yes, that can mean clichéd too.  5/17/2021

Other movies and TV show(s) I’ve seen and their ratings (see above):

Dead Ant  >>>EH/OK

Extraordinary Tales  >>>EH/OK

Hunted (2020)  >>>OK
   (Shudder)

Land (2021)  >>>OK

Oxygen (2021)  >>>EH
   (Netflix; In French with subtitles)

The Reckoning (2021)  >>>OK

Sator  >>>EH/OK 

Son (2021)  >>>OK

These Streets We Haunt  >>>EH

The Valley  >>>OK
   (6 episodes; In German with subtitles)

Wander Darkly  >>>EH

---Sean O.
5/18/2021

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