Doom: Annihilation (2019) is a movie I didn't know existed until recently, which is doubly unfortunate because I'm apparently one of the only people who liked it. It's a fairly bad movie objectively speaking, but it has demons eating people on a space station so it's never gonna be that bad within its field. It suffers from the usual problem where the bad things eviscerate people instantly from out of thin air while tanking an entire rifle clip sometimes, and sometimes knock them over before falling down themselves from a few handgun shots.
One point (mostly) in its favor is that the soldier mooks all respond fairly appropriately to the obviously bad shit going down. There's a scene in Event Horizon where the crew listens to the "distress message" that is very clearly twenty seconds of screaming space eels, and their response is HUH WEIRD WONDER WHAT WE'LL FIND OUT THERE. There's a similar scene in this movie where everyone's expressions gradually turn to "What the fuck?" followed by somebody actually demanding out loud "What the fuck?!" It still doesn't manage to give most of them much personality, but it's a valiant effort for both that and making them behave somewhat plausibly. Slight counterpoint: They do NOT pick up on rather ominous social cues nearly as readily.
Overall a solid movie about people dying in space. 3.6 on IMDb, 15% user reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. Probably had it in them to make an actually good movie out of it, but oh well.
Mongolian Death Worm (2010 or 2011) has no such delusions of grandeur. It's about Mongolian Death Worms, but since those don't actually exist it's about chubby giant maggots waddling around eating people. As is law and custom, they are stealthy instagib predators immune to bullet fire or waddling target practice as the plot and target demands. Movie mainly gets points for the main character being consistently well-rounded scum (though his forced romance/tension with main chick is annoying) and watching one of the main antagonist's "plans" unravel over and over again. The ending is impressively pointless and unconvincing even by the local checkbox standards.
3.3 IMDb, 9% Rotten Tomatoes. Critics on RT didn't even bother.
Eye of the Beast (2006 or 2007) is a movie. I think. It's supposed to involve a giant squid eating people but it's mostly fish-hicks being bad at things. Also scientists being bad at things. And I guess law enforcement being bad at things, or at least late at things.
I'm trying to remember what happens that isn't a spoiler and I got nothing. Technically a spoiler but also really predictable: They eventually decide to go after THE BEAST, which is incredibly stupid and most of them die. Also they seem to have pretty good luck just going after the fucking thing with machetes or literal knives, so their big plan was probably always dumber than "we get drunk and go out and, like uh, shoot it or something" like the drunk fishermen wanted.
4.2 IMDb, 10% Rotten Tomatoes. Lying swine the both of them, there's no way that was even marginally better than DEATH WORM, let alone OOPS A ZOMBIE.
Pay the Ghost (2015) features The Cage hyperventilating in a cowboy outfit. It's otherwise a pretty bad movie. I think they were trying to go for a low-key supernatural horror thing like The Omen, but the movie just doesn't have enough stuff going on to do anything with it. Instead it just shows Cage having a breakdown and murders minor characters now and then. Also some outright supernatural stuff, but nobody (including the movie) takes it seriously enough to really matter.
Sort of feels like they couldn't decide whether to make the movie and its payoffs supernatural or mundane, so neither aspect is done well enough to carry it.
5.2 IMDb, so they must really like Cage. RT is less forgiving: 10% Critics, 25% Audience. Audiences still really like The Cage, it seems, but not enough to save him from this.
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Topic: The Movie Discussion Thread! (Read 169938 times)