Bria Lou Reviews

  For a long time I thought I'd already seen this movie. It was only the night before watching it that I realised I've actually only seen the 2004 remake. While not a sequel, this is the second in a series of zombie movies by the director, the first of which being Night of the Living Dead. Despite liking both movies, I definitely preferred the former. It begins from a place of chaos, which is a great way to get the audience to understand the characters' states of mind. It took a while for the movie to grab me. The chaos of it all made it hard to follow, and hard to latch onto the characters.  The movie kind of takes Night of the Living Dead and expands it to a much larger scale. I actually preferred the smaller scale, as we got to intimately know the characters and we got time to understand their world. In comparison, this one definitely felt like being thrown in at the deep end.  As with all creature feature-type movies, I wanted to see more of the 'creatures'. Its...

  After witnessing an accident, a couple discover that they are being haunted by a demonic entity known as 'the passenger'. The trailer for this film was so fantastic that I couldn't wait to see the whole movie. It gave little away, previewed the potential scares and really left you wanting more. Unfortunately, the scenes in the trailer were the best part of the movie. The first half of the trailer makes up maybe 10 minutes of the movie, and it was a really great opening. We were immediately invested, scared, and really interested in where it would go. And then it just went downhill. The pacing isn't great - it speeds up, then slows to a glacial pace, then speeds up too quickly at random moments, making it hard to maintain interest. The scares are great, for the most part, but they begin to feel more important than the story itself. And part of that is because the story itself can be incoherent and messy, to the point where the only thing anchoring the story in a consis...

  This was one of the re-watches that I was most looking forward to, and from what I can remember, one of the only movies on this bucket list that I actually got to see in the cinema. I love this movie, along with most of the population. It's so much easier to write about something you've never seen before, than to write about something that you already love! The very start of the movie sets a tone that carries all the way through. We're scared, we're unsettled and there's so much nerves and anticipation that you're glued to the screen for the entire runtime. The pacing is so great, something is happening every minute and it moves so quickly that by the time it's over it feels like it just started, in the best possible way. It's so interesting to see how many careers were made or bolstered as a result of this film. It seems that all of the actors involved got huge boosts from this movie and most have gone on to do really interesting things, possibly as a...

  Sophie (Sunny Sandler) just got the lead in the school musical. But when life at home takes a dramatic turn, she is forced to balance competing priorities with the fear of a changing future. This movie wasn't really on my radar until I saw people talking about it on social media. I didn't know much of what it was about, which ended up being a good thing. I liked this film a lot more than I initially thought I might.  I really liked the way music was incorporated. One thing I had seen on social media was a clip of the main character singing, and I really liked that music was used throughout rather than just in one scene. The actors are all great, but in particular I really loved Melanie Lynskey and Max Greenfield in these roles. You connect with this family really quickly and only get more invested in their lives as the movie continues. That said, I would have liked for some of the relationships to be explored a bit more. This is a mother/daughter story, but there are other f...

  (aka 'A Black Cat in a Bamboo Grove', making the film virtually impossible to find!) This was the most elusive film on the bucket list for sure. I'd been looking for it all year and watched it as soon as I found it just to make sure it wouldn't disappear! I liked this film, though there were some aspects that I liked in theory more than in their execution.  It begins in a really uncomfortable way, and I'm really glad I didn't go in blind to this one. It makes sense for the story, as the initial incident is the catalyst for the rest of the film, but it was a shock for that to be the first thing we see.  Revenge films usually focus on men, with women often being the victims. I loved that with this one, even though the women are the victims, they are also the perpetrators of the revenge.  They're such strong characters, and it's really fun watching their acts play out.  If anything, I would have liked to see more of this revenge plot - it would have been ...

  This is another one that I'd never heard of before seeing it on the bucket list. I deliberately went in blind, so I had no idea what it was about. I didn't love this one. The first thing you notice is the way it's filmed. Despite being made in the late 70s, visually it looks older than a lot of earlier movies. Based on the locations and costumes, it's hard to work out anything about this film, from location to time period to how real its supposed to be and how seriously we're supposed to take it. It gets crazier than I initially expected. If you go in blind, it's the kind of movie where you really can't tell where it's going or what the message, if any, will be. It was great to actually get to know the two main characters somewhat. They could have been more developed but they're fun to follow. Its interesting looking at the variety of horror movies that focus on or become satanic. This one feels slightly more grounded than some of the others but de...