Movie Review A Quiet Place

A Quiet Place (2018)

Directed by John Krasinski 

Written by Brian Woods, Scott Beck, John Krasinski 

Starring John Krasinski, Emily Blunt, Millicent Simmonds, Noah Jupe 

Release Date April 16th, 2018

Published June 28th, 2024 

Legendary filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock once offered a brilliant dissection of suspense in movies. Imagine a man carrying a bomb. It's in a briefcase. No one other than the man carrying the briefcase knows that there is a bomb inside. We, the audience, know the bomb is there because we watched the man carrying the briefcase, carefully and meticulously assemble and place the bomb in the briefcase. The excitement is that a bomb is going to go off and cause death, destruction and chaos. But, suspense, is watching the man build the bomb, place it in the briefcase, walk gingerly, awkwardly and very carefully to the place where the bomb is to be placed. 

The tension continues to build as the man places the briefcase under a bench in a park filled with people. The suspense mounts when the man leaves, leaving behind the briefcase, precariously positioned beneath the bench. The tension grows to unbearable levels as the bomber tries to leave, only to be stopped by s0meone who mentions that he forgot his briefcase. The bomber is sweating and stammering, he needs to get away but he doesn't want anyone to know about the bomb. The ticking of the timer is evident to us and to the bomber, he has mere moments to get himself safely away from the explosion that is set to kill anyone close to it. What does he do?

Find my full length review at Horror.Media, linked here. 

Movie Review The Boogeyman

The Boogeyman (2023) 

Directed by Rob Savage 

Written by Scott Beck, Bryan Woods, Mark Heyman

Starring Sophie Thatcher, Chris Messina, Vivian Lyra Blair, David Dastmalchian 

Release Date June 2nd, 2023 

Published June 5th, 2023 

As I write this, I saw the new horror film, The Boogeyman, two days ago and I am struggling to remember anything about it. This could, perhaps, be a mental breakdown on my part, but my working theory is that The Boogeyman is such a boring movie that my mind didn't bother to find anything worth remembering about it. There is not a single original moment in the entirety of The Boogeyman. There is not a single memorable sequence that could make this movie worth remembering after you see it. The Boogeyman is so bland and generic it could be retitled as Nightmare Man and re-released to theaters and few people would notice or care. 

The Boogeyman stars a lovely young actress named Sophie Thatcher as Sadie Harper. Sadie and her little sister, Sawyer (Vivian Lyra Brown), are grieving the very recent loss of their mother. Chris Messina plays their distant and equally grieving father, Will. Will is terrified of being a single dad to two frightened and traumatized young girls so he throws himself back into his work as a psychiatrist while avoiding any kind of serious conversation with his children, especially Sadie who tries and fails to get him to open up. 

The plot kicks in when a deeply haunted and disturbed patient forces his way into Will's office. The patient is Lester Billings (David Dastmalchian), a man who is believed by many to have murdered his two children. Billings however, claims that a monster killed his kids. This monster attacks your children while you aren't paying attention. It also feeds on vulnerable children, kids who have, perhaps, suffered a very recent and painful trauma. You can see where this is headed. The curse that this haunted man carries attaches itself to Sadie and Sawyer and it will be up to Sadie to save her sister from this monster that comes to be known as The Boogeyman. 

Find my full length review at Horror.Media 

Movie Review 65

65 (2023) 

Directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods 

Written by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods 

Starring Adam Driver, Arian Greenblatt, Nika King, Chloe Coleman 

Release Date March 10th, 2023 

Published March 12th, 2023 

65 does little to justify its own existence. The sci-fi action movie starring Adam Driver is an incredibly basic and repetitive action movie that happens to include space travel and people from a planet other than Earth. The core story is about a man trying to protect a small girl from a perilous and uncaring world, a story reflected in his personal life where he has a daughter who is sick and dying from an unspecified disease. Saving this small girl in the context of a mission on a foreign planet is intended as commentary on protecting the man's daughter from an illness that may kill her. 

That sounds like it has potential and perhaps it does but nothing really comes from that potential. Adam Driver plays Captain Mills. Mills has been offered three times his salary to take a group of people in cryo-pods from one side of the universe to another. It's a trip that will take two years to complete. This means spending two years away from his wife, (Nika King), and their sick daughter (Chloe Coleman). Why do this? Because the family needs the money to give their daughter a chance to survive. 

The plot of 65 kicks in when an unexpected meteor shower shatters the calm of an otherwise mundane space trip. This field of meteors seemingly came out of nowhere, Mills was asleep when it happened, demonstrating just how unexpected this was. The ship crashes on a nearby, seemingly uninhabited planet. Uninhabited by intelligent life forms anyway. Instead, the planet is populated by giant monsters that we recognize as dinosaurs, though Mills doesn't seem to know what they are. 

Mills must then find an escape pod which is about 12 kilometers from where his part of the ship crashed. His journey is complicated when he learns that one of his cryo-pod passengers is still alive. Koa (Ariana Greenblatt), is foreign to Mills. She doesn't speak the same language and this communication barrier will provide further complication as they attempt to navigate the 12 kilometers of lush jungle, low and dangerous open space, and a mountain range. 

Read my full length review at Geeks.Media