Film Review : " the Last Voyage of the Demeter"

This movie is better than 'Renfield". It should be as it's helmed by Trollhunter director Andre Ovredal. The Norwegian director understands he has to play Hollywood's game if he wants to play in Hollywood's toybox and move into the mainstream. Not that this film's opening weekend is going to help him with that, and there lingers a suspicion that if he trusted his gut. Instead he agreed to a screen play with weak characters , the main weakness it's protagonist who feels forced into the canvas of this tale. Granted we know the ship is doomed, but they could have made us care about the fate of the crew. Instead no one except the child and his dog are likeable characters. The movie looks good and captures a mood well, but aside from that things are paper thin, which might have still works if it was not for some of the more glaring problems. 

 The plot holes are so large you could sail the Demeter through them. The very premise of the film being called into question by one. This movie should be filling in the blanks of a story already told. One of the largest comes to glaring crack in the fissure of the premise with that fact that if  Dracula was on the ship to begin with it is  because as a vampire he can bodies of moving water. So why is he flying over water in the film's third act. No, you twit there can't be spoilers to the movie as it follows Dracula's arrival in London direct from Bram Stoker's source material.  If he could fly in this manner there would be no need, to take a boat to England rather than fly there , it's only a three hour flight . He has to move all the dirt from his homeland you say? Well if Dracula has the foresight to hire Johnathan Harker to help handle his business affairs then he could have had the dirt shipped ahead of time to Carfax Abbey. 

Dracula might be in a weakened state from travel at the beginning of the movie , but we never see him as the character documented in Stoker's work.  Instead we get a mocking monster who in it's best moments looks a little like a Nosferatu, but never captures the regal nature of the character. I get artistic license and wanting to do something new, but when you are pulling directly from a book, you have chosen your parameters. It's been brought up that this is basically "Aliens" and while that is true in the monster stowaway trope, I think they did the best they could to avoid that. I did not find this movie to be scary, but it was entertaining for what it was. though while "Renfield ' was overall a worse movie, I might at least preferred Cage's take on Dracula which had some Bela Lugosi moments to fall back on. Hollywood needs to learn nobody cares about the story they want to tell and we want the story that should be told, sure try it from different angles, but if you are making movies of icons like Dracula or the Wolf-man then balance your artistic twist in a manner that still honors that legacy.  Hopefully the spanking it took at the box office will drive this point home. 

Film Review : "Talk to Me"

 The only aspect of critical reactions to this movie that I agree with regarding "Talk to Me" is that it holds little common ground with the other A24 films. In fact A24 has nothing to do with the film except the fact that they acquired the rights to distribute it. This does not mean that there is much originality in the premise of the movie or the elements that cut and paste from other horror movies. The premise is the same as any of the "Ouija" films, they just replaced the Ouija board with a mummified hand. Stylistically "It Follows" is a fair point of reference, people who don't want to see are not going , as rather than a weird sex curse they are passing along the mummified hand. You can also see where they drew inspiration from movies like "Jacobs Ladder" and "Flatliners" , though at the end of the day it's the same kind of high school dramatics that fueled the "Final Destination" franchise. 

Is the problem the young actors , the directing or both? None of the characters are likeable. The supposed protagonist, is supposedly dealing with the loss of their mother, but come off as just being entitled as she endangers those around her. The misadventures that follow dabbling with the mummified hand, as a sequence of  bad ideas, that are almost like every "Don't go in the basement" type of horror retardation that has already killed off tons of stupid teenagers. The only manner it succeeds as a horror movie is the collection of bad ideas the characters follow to their demise, is the kind of discomfort horror movies, should generate, though if it was coupled with better writing and played less off preexisting tropes to the point of leaving you feeling you have already seen this movie before. 

I do prefer horror movies without happy endings, so this works in that regard. It's a similar brand of sinking feelings that cast a depressive sense of unease over the viewer, much like It Follows, in that regard, however it ignores who things work in the real world , like cops would have never let Mia go free the first time one of her friends went to the hospital, nor would she be able to come within fifty feet of said friend after the fact, kind of a big plot hole to fall through. After the film's trip to Cannes, I am sure the A24 marketing team was quick to promote the diverse cast, which still finds it's box office lagging behind "Cocaine Bear" , but outselling "Terrifier 2" to give you an idea of the films success, not that box office is a fair indication of a good movies, look at the Fast and Furious movies for an example in that regard. While I do want original horror instead of remakes, this movie almost a remake of several movies that it cobbles together as a celluloid Frankenstein's monster, and turns into into a mess plot wise, and just another teen horror movie marketed like a hip art house film, when it would be better left to Netflix,