Malignant

 

A woman gets hit in the head and then all sorts of murdering starts happening to people she knows, and even some people she doesn’t know she knows. It’s a kinda by the numbers James Wan joint until, yes, just like everybody said, the last half hour just goes buck wild! My major gripe though is there is a part where they just superimposed the giant “Silvercup” sign from Silvercup Studios in Queens over some Seattle apartments. Like, it’s instantly recognizable to the millions and millions of people who’ve ever driven across the 59th Street Bridge, whaddaya think you’re doing James Wan???

RATING: 75%

Insidious: Chapter 2

When last we saw our Insidii, the old psychic woman was killed by the husband person who hired her because he got possessed by an evil ghost. This movie is all about having to depossess the guy and get rid of all the ghosts, except now they don't have the powerful psychic woman to help out. The movies just a lotto loud screaming and piano crashes though - not exactly manufacturing lasting dread.

RATING: 33%

Insidious

Moving into a spooky new house a bunch of scary stuff starts happening after a couple's oldest son gets knocked into a coma. Maybe the house is haunted??? Good guess, but actually it's their comatose son who is haunted! They call up a ghost hunter who happens to be a family friend to deal with the ghostly trouble. Like, in movies people always know somebody who can deal with a haunting! I don't know anybody like that - what am I supposed to do if I'm ever haunted, huh??? Back to the movie, the ghost hunter convinces the father of the haunted kid to take a magical journey to a haunted ghost realm to get his son back, but there are three more Insidii so I bet you can guess things don't all go according to plan.

RATING: 76%

Saw

This is the first installment of the famous seven (seven? are you kidding me?) film franchise of "torture porn" films (a term I disagree with but I'll save that discussion for one of the sequels in case I run out of things to talk about). The plot is there's some killer named the Jigsaw Killer because he takes a jigsaw puzzle-piece shaped slice of flesh from each of his victims, although that is 100% ignored forever after they mention it briefly once, so I think they were just attempting to justify the name of the movie or killer or both. Anyway, two guys are trapped in a room and they've got to figure out how to escape with clues! It has an interesting premise and ok execution, but the main problem is I think you're sorta supposed to agree with this killer's philosophy of nobody truly appreciating life until they're forced to eat a buncha razors or something, but he comes across sounding like a 19-year old who just discovered Ayn Rand. Just shut up already, Mr. J. S. Killer!

RATING: 71%