Review: Chucky S1 Ep02 (2021)

Stars: Lexa Doig, Brad Dourif

This episode seemed to pass quick yet also seemed empty in a lot of ways. It's a week later it see's Jake still living with his aunt and uncleSeems like after killing Jakes father Chucky has his sights set on Lexy the bitchy bully schoolgirl now. He seems to be making out that he's doing it to help Jake but we all know Chucky by now He's obviously got some other sinister plan.

So the Kids go to school and for some reason Chucky take a dislike to the maid, possibly after she sprays him with cleaning fluid, he kills her, then the cops get involved again. Here was a particular weak piece of writing for me, Jake and cousin were clearly at school all day, the cops even say the porch security footage see's them coming home. Yet they still point the finger at both, well okay mostly Jake for the 'freak' accident, I'm sure the school and both the coroners report would also put he death waaay beyond them being there.

Anyway after getting an invite to the popular kids halloween party Jake doesn't go until he notices Chucky missing and goes to stop him from killing Lexy, does he succeed?

THN awards Ep02 also a decent 3 out of 5 stars.

Review: Halloween Kills (2021)

Stars: Judy Greer, Jamie Lee Curtis

Budget: $20million

Directed By: David Gordon Greene

On the whole i generally hate it when a movie series goes back and branches off a new continuity.

Now Halloween 2018 did that with ignoring everything from part 2 onwards. Suffice it to say I did enjoy 2018. Now this was meant to be released last Halloween, but due to c19 it got delayed until now, or Oct 15th.

I have to admit the trailer didn't wow me and actually set off a few alarm bells when I heard mention of Micheal becoming stronger with each kill. I immediately dreaded they were going to use the most silliest of plots again: the cult of thorn. More on that later.

The film as of writing this has made over $50 million, amazing for an 18/R rated film. This is of course the middle offering of a trilogy so yes I will say here the previews saying it does just 'end' are right but come on theres going to be a 3rd one to finish it off.

The music score is beyond brilliant with John carpenter working on it and remixing some of his OG Halloween tunes.

The last one ended with a lot of people wounded or dead and Micheal hopefully being crisped up in Lauries basement. Well this opens with Lauries grand-daughters boyfriend finding a wounded Hawkins and basically saving his life from the neck stabbing he got in 2018.

We are then given a closer look into what happened after Loomis 'Shot him 6 times' in a flashback to the night 40 years ago.

The film goes pretty much the way any Halloween film goes but the first few kills are a bit silly especially the killing of some of the OG older cast when they are in the car, especially the their new friends of the doctor and nurse combo.

Laurie gets mended in the hospital as does Hawkins there's some more flashbacks where Hawkins explains he stopped Loomis from killing Micheal back then. Some of the other kids from back 40 years mentally scarred from that night gather a mob to kill Micheal, this backfires at one point where one of the other mental patients gets confused for Micheal and I think that's some commentary on how mob mentality can get. Once a gestalt entity forms like that it's hard to separate again. This was one of the pet peeves I had with the film though was the writing seemed a little repetitive and basic at times, with the mob chanting evil or He dies tonight all the bloody time. Again I get it, I get why but it was just to much for me.

Now there is a certain invincible quality to Micheal in this movie and he takes a beating on occasion and just takes it in his stride. I think this is what Laurie is referring to in the trailers and said in this film too, thankfully it doesn't seem at least in this movie to be anything to do with the cult of the thorn again, I a\m interested to see if that gets any kind of tying up in the next film we'll just have wait to see.

Laurie doesn't do much in this film, not for lack of trying, she gets put back to bed a few times by her daughter, but she is an old woman with a stab wounded gut, what do you expect.

The kills are often brutal and I won't spoil anymore, This is a decent midway point now, i'm interested to see where it goes, I've heard the next one is a time jump, though I thought I remembered them saying this was going to take place over 1 night originally but again maybe C-19 has changed those plans.

Halloween kills is by far not perfect, it's a great midway point with a few flaws THN awards Halloween Kills (2021) a strong 3 out of 5 stars.

Review: Chucky S1 Ep01 (2021)

Stars: Lexa Doig, Brad Dourif, Devon Sawa

I was both looking forwards to this and dreading it. The reason for this being it's a straight up continuation of the Child's play films, the original ones. But it's also SyFy channel and they have a thing about not being that good. Not only that it was a kid centric role and also well you know how things can get these days, a foul mouthed man doll might not be looked upon kindly.

BD comes back to voice the eccentric killer doll too which is good. I didn't realise until the end that the guy playing (two roles) the dads was Devon Sawa too, he looks so different from Final Destination days.

Now let get onto the things that I didn't like. Now i'm not to hot on how small town american places are but is that really how backwards they are with sexuality?
If so give what i'm about to mention here a pass, the main boy is blatantly gay but he's bullied and the attitude of nearly everyone is like nineties backwards. Like I said I don't know if this is the norm in this situation or just if it's written in that way to inflame the situation.

BUT this is where it comes into it's own though as everything is pivotal on that, When he buys Chucky from a garden sale he's wimpy by even the end of the first episode he's gaining confidence after Chucky, for some unknown reason at the moment is helping him. Albeit it in his own twisted way.
From showing his bullying father a thing or two, to showing up the bitchy, bullying schoolgirl too in a most amusing ventriloquist act. It does culminate into something I rather enjoyed from the second half, if it keeps that up it'll be a winner for me.

THN awards Ep1 a strong 3 out of 5 so far

Review: Escape Room Tournament of Champions (2021)

Stars: Taylor Russell, Logan Miller

Budget: $15 million

Directed By: Adam Robitel

I like to bunch anything where torture to characters in movies as a 'saw' type film. being one of the daddies of the franchise, though I know there were things before it but Saw really made them popular.
Along with the likes of Hostel which made the torture people for money angle more popular. 

Making almost $50 million on a $15 million budget still made this a reasonable hit in our day and age, especially up against the abysmal space jam 2.

A sequel to the last Escape Room where the two main protagonists that survived that film return again in this film to take revenge on the company that trapped them in the first. There's some twists and turns, though I did ask myself the obvious question that why didn't the just leave well enough alone. Though thankfully they do bring this up in the film and answer it adequately too.

So we join Zoey and Ben (Taylor&Logan) some time after the first film, all healed in body but obviously still not in mind. They are planning to find where the head on the Minos Corporation is then get proof of their dastardly dealings in trapping and killing people for rich peoples amusement.

No we get a bit of a hoodwink AND a look at the people behind the creation of the rooms as Zoey and Ben are about to board a plane. In what seems like some kind of parallel the Minos Corp leader Henry (James Frain) working on a room seemingly based on an Aeroplane. Seems like it's trying to trick you into thinking the two are going to be in an escape room when they board,
Zoey seemingly foils this when she gets to scared to board the plane due to her fears of flying, They then get a rental to drive to the area they know of.

In this film we also get an insight into the family life of the people who make the trap rooms for these faceless millionaires too. The daughter is seemingly trapped by her father after her mother and her seemingly try to leave him a few years back, which we see in a flashback.
Unfortunately this gave away a massive secret to me as I watched as I'd seen something like this before in other films. I won't spoil it here though as it's an end of movie thing, which you know don't spoil unless the film is abysmally bad.

So doing their investigations Ben and Zoey get trapped once again by Minos on a subway train, trap room they quickly learn that everyone onboard is a survivor of one of the previous games, making this of course the Tournament of champions. They do say the thing I mentioned about why you'd ever go back to, or start looking for all this shit if you survived but then they do intelligently say it seems like they would have made them all return whether they were looking for them or not. Zoey along with a mysterious benefactor helps an ever shrinking team escape each room, as well as try to get proof to bring down the Minos Corporation.

So what did I think? Well it was decent, it was a good sequel, especially after the sequel baiting of the first movie. Was it needed? Probably not but if you were clamoring for more it'll fill that gap.

THN awards Escape Room ToC (2021) a good 3 stars out of 5