Nocturne 2020 Film Revew

 

Horror fans i've seen alot of horror over the years and I will most certainly watch a ton more even before the end of the year. Even with alot of films either being pushed back into next year or heading straight to verious different streaming services there are still some horror films out and as luck would have a few new films from the Welcome To The Blumhouse series in Amazon Prime have been released and so here is my review of film four in the Welcome To The Blumhouse series called "Nocturne" so enjoy the review eveeryone.

Now here I would normally tell you what the plot of the movie is well as give you my opinion on the plot of the film. However for some strange reason the makers behind this film chose not to have plot which is movie making 101 you need to tell a story and when you don't do that your whole film falls apart because the auidence won't be able to connect to the characters nor will the audience be engaged because your not giving them a reason to be engaged in your film.

Starring in the film is Sydney Sweeney as Juliet , Madison Iseman as Vivian and Jacques Colimon as Max. Also starring in the film is Ivan Shaw as Vivian’s instructor , Julie Benz as Cassie , Brandon Keener as David , JoNell Kennedy as The Music Department Head , Asia Jackson as Abigail , John Rothman as Roger , Stephon Fuller as Joshua , A.J. Tannen as Mike , Rodney To as Wilkins and Ivan Shaw as an unknown character.

I'm not joking with the Ivan Shaw credit I have no idea who he is or who he's even playing in this film and IMDB is no help whatsoever since that only has his name and not the name of his character in the movie. As for what I thought about the acting in the film it was pretty decent all of the actors do a solid job but at the same time the script gives these actors nothing to work as such the actors are kind of lost since they can only do so much with the script and the film's wirter / director Zu Quirke has never written or even directed a feature film before now so the cast have no chance of turning in a great performance.

This is I believe the last of the first four films in the Welcome To The Blumhouse series but I do believe that they have another four films. When those other four films are released or even what they are at this point remians to be seen but i'm honestly all for Welcome To The Blumhouse continuing since it gives fresf faces a platform to show what they can do and having new names in the realm of horror is always a good thing.

That being said the director / writer of this film is the very definition of  new face in horror since as far as I can tell Zu Quirke who is this films director and writer have never made a horror film before now. Hell as I said this is the first feature film that Zu Quirke has made having previously only made short films which is this film biggest mistake because the whole thing just reeks of inexperince and while I won't be knocking points of the film for that it is something that Blumhouse and Amazon should be weary of in the future since it could  put people of watching future film in the Welcome To The Blumhouse series.

I'm going to be freaking brutal here this film is boring as hell and part of what makes the film boring is the fact that nothing happens for large portions of the film. Again this is film makeing 101 no matter how bad your film is your audience needs to be entertained in some way and when you add in the fact that there is no plot to this film if your like me then you'll find yourself checking to see how long is left or browsing the internet.

Not helping with the boredom (and this is something that could have been fixed with a few rewrites of the script) is the fact that the characters are just uninteresting. Try as I might I cannot think of a single interesting character in this film and that's because all of the characters are written the exact same and all have no personality to them and so all of the characters come across as very one dimensional which doesn't make them interesting it makes them bad and boring characters.

One of the semi interesting things about the film is the realtionship between sisters Juliet (Sydney Sweeney) and Vivian (Madison Iseman) with one being a highly talented musician who is highly popular and the other still being a highly talented musician but is also willing to do whatever it takes to get to the top. In a much better film this relationship would have been the centre piece of the film and delved into much deeper but it's not in a better film it's in this film and the releationship between the two sisters is barely mentioned or even touched upon until the final act by which time it's to little to freaking late.

This film is a mericifly short hour and a half long but even so the film feels like it's on for a lot freaking longer. If ahything this film should have been well under an hour long hell it should have been at least thrity minuets long at the most but nope they have to drag it out to feature length which means all of the issues that I had with the film are now major issues since if it was thirty minuets long they would have been very minor issues at best.

Now then boys and girls since this is a horror film that does mean that we have to talk about the scares that are in the film. There really aren't that many scares but to this films credit it's focus isn't on trying to scare you it's it's supernaturel angle which even tho it's not really explained either very well or at all it does mean that we do get some pretty creepy imagery take for example the above picture which is honestly the coolest image in the whole film if you ask but I do feel that the film makers could have spent more time on developing it's supernaturel angle instead of leaving it all unexplained but that's just what I think.

Overall incase you cannot tell I really didn't like this film at all for all the reasons that i've listed in this review and then some. However I do feel that this is a case of the director / writer just simply either not knowing that they were doing or just biting of more then they can chew since this was Zu Quirke's first feature film as such alot of the issues that I had with the film can simply be forgiven but this film is still pretty bad and boring in my opinion as such this film gets a 2.5 out of 10 from me.

All of the images that I used in this review were gathered from Google Images and rather shocking I went nowhere else for the images that I used in this review. Since I only went to Google Images for the images that I used in this review I kind of have no choice but to recommend that you use Google Images for images from this film and as always boys and girls we end this review as we always do boys and girls with our one true goddess Elvira wishing us all some very , very unpleasant dreams.

Black Box 2020 Film Review

 

Horror fans it's been roughly a month since I last reviewed a new horror movie and well thank god Amazon has just started releasing a new series where every episode is a new horror movie because there are very little to no new films horror or otherwise coming out for the foreseeable future. I honestly have no idea what to think about this film since before me even writing this review I hadn't seen or even heard of the film that i'm about to review and so here is my review of the 2020 film called "Black Box" enjoy the review everyone.

The plot of the film six months after just surviving a car crash that killed his wife Nolan still suffers from memory lose and so he goes to see a specialist that puts him in a special program to help regain his memories but over the course of his treatment he'll find out something truly shocking. I honestly feel that the story of the film while it is pretty hard to figure what the actual plot is the story is fairly decent and is honestly really creative in my opinion.

Starring in the film is Mamoudou Athie as Nolan , Phylicia Rashad as Lilian and Amanda Christine as Ana. Also starring in the film is Tosin Morohunfola as Gary , Troy James as Backwards Man , Charmaine Bingwa as Miranda and Donald Watkins as Thomas. I have no idea if this is a complete cast list or not but this is the closest cast list that I could actually find and so I hope that it's the complete cast list.

The acting in this film I honestly feel is alot better then it really had any right to be since if any actor read what the concept for this film was then alot of the actors would be giving over the top performances. However here the actors are going the opposite route and are instead giving really solid performances that honestly not only work fr there character and it also helps that the child actress isn't annoying as all hell.

Now this movie premiered on Amazon in a really cool way because it premiered as the second episode of the new series Welcome To The Blumhouse. Which is a series made up of four feature films all of which are produced by Blumhouse Pictures and the series itself airs on Amazon Prime Video this to me is a great way to get these little known films out there since nobody would give alot of the films there releasing this way attention because there's nothing recognisable about this films and there's no big name attached to them.

Sadly these films aren't being released weekly I think there's releasing them every few weeks but it means that we are getting new content which right now is a good thing. I will admit that they could have done something with the concept behind the series like maybe they could have had a host for the series just something that would make the series a little bit more entertaining and as well as give us another reason to check the series out.

To me the film seemed rather slow paced and kind of boring which for any film is never a good thing since you want your audience to be entertained. Part of what makes the film boring to me is it's slow burning plot since the story is paper thin at best and so having a slow burning plot where for large portions of the film nothing is happening makes the film boring and because of that the pacing feels slow because there's nothing happening.

Another issue with the film which also ties back into what I was just saying about the film is the fact that's an hour and forty minuets long. This to me is a huge mistake because like I just said there's nothing happening for large portions of the film and the story is thin at best as such I honestly feel that this film should have been an hour long and even that's pushing it making the film an hour and forty minuets just means that the audience is going to sit there bored for a long time since they are waiting for anything of interest to happen.

This is the directorial debut for Emmanuel Osei-Kuffour Jr. who also co-wrote the film's screenplay with Stephen Herman. I honestly feel that there script needed tweaking because the idea is solid hell you can get a decent film out of the idea but where the film comes apart is with the script because there's alot of padding like the film makers are trying to get the film up to or in this case beyond a feature length running time.

                                                                                    

Now then boys and girls since this is a horror film that does mean that we have to talk about the scares that are in the film. To me the scariest thing about this film is the idea because the idea for the film is truly creepy and that to me makes up for the fact that there aren't alot of actual scares but the actual scares in the film are pretty creepy and are only the most entertaining things in the entire film in my honest opinion.

Overall this film could be entertaining in parts but for me at least the overall majority of the film was pretty boring to watch. There are some good things that in this film but you have to get through alot of the bad stuff just to get a glimmer of how good this film could be and while I do feel that Emmanuel Osei-Kuffour Jr. has a future as a director regardless of the genre he also has alot of room to grow as both a writer and director as such this film gets a 4.5 out of 10 from this horror fan.

All of the images that I used in this review were gathered from either Wikipedia or Google Images and for once it really doesn't matter where you get images from the film from. I say that because even tho Wikipedia does have a high quality version of the film's poster which i've used in this review by the way that's the only image from the film that it has and Google Images has so little images from the film and the ones that it does have range from really high quality to medium quality at best but as always boys and girls we end this review as we always do with our true goddess Elvira wishing us all some very unpleasant dreams.