J*A*S*M

An effective ninety-minute ghost story. DiBlasi exploits that time with every known way a ghost story can scare (phone calls, lights going out, auditory hallucinations, doors opening an closing, scary manifestations, unscary manifestations that actually lead to the scary ones, etc., etc.) without using them in any interesting way (with the exception perhaps of the scene with the torch, that one was good). It’s basically the same as every other ghost story that can end either in this or in that other way, so there aren’t many surprises to talk about. To me this film feels so ambiguously unfinished that the conclusion is either one way or the other. In any case, Last Shift is nothing original that can be a future topic of conversation. As a direct to video release is fine, in fact, compared to similar films it’s quite good thanks to the competent craftsmanship and atmosphere that make it pretty effective. Thumbs up.

Incredibly annoying, weak, kitsch and manipulative agitprop.

If the creators had worked a bit harder on the make-up of the infected kids to make them look sicker and scarier, the film would have been more effective, but other than that, it’s the ideal horror comedy. Very competently shot with a good cast and a funny script. I wouldn’t mind a sequel with these characters.

I’m giving it a low rating, but I still recommend this film because here the number of stars doesn’t matter. Five-star scenes are followed by rubbish ones, and some sequences that remind of old-time Giallo are followed by others that are almost parodically ridiculous. It if was a serious homage, I would have been as excited as I was in the first minutes (until things didn’t become a film within a film) – and I’m not even counting that comedic exaggeration that is the base of the film, which I didn’t find funny.

A solid vampire tale without any ambitions to do anything in any untraditional or peculiar way (for that, I recommend the one last year from New Zealand). But in spite of it (or actually, because of it) the result is a very easy-going but also very nice, watchable and likeable film. I had fun and I laughed.

This experience is hard to describe, but the predominant impression is something between fascination, interest and facepalm. The closer it gets to the ending, the worse things are. The beginning is not too shabby, though, McDonald delivers a pretty creative and scary picture, which unfortunately crumbles in his hands after some time. The moment it switches to… well, actually, I don’t know what that was exactly, some sort of dream reality, perhaps?… you loose the bearings of the plot and the rules that apply to it. On top of that, there are so many approaches at play and they could result in anything from a brutal home invasion or a poetic feeling, to a bizarre surrealist thing, but all those things together are actually weird. In any case, Hellions has a couple of interesting scenes and the film is worth watching to make your own opinion. It’s certainly one of the most interesting new things around, even if I’m far from an explicit compliment.

I want to believe that things will work out with time, but the first episode was quite bad. I don’t mind that it’s a copy of foreign formats (where else can you learn but from American late night shows?), but the worst is that, from the first to the last minute, it grinds terribly and all the conversations feel artificial and fake. I would get rid of the games and give more space to Hezucký… and I would also allow Mareš to improvise a bit more. More interesting guests wouldn’t hurt, either. It also needs an audience that would react more lively (either spontaneously or with the help of cheerleaders, but certainly not prompted by the host). I think Leoš Mareš is one of the few Czech hosts that can handle this format, and hopefully he will get there. In any case, better than Genzer and Suchánek.

What the advertising sold as a run-of-the-mill stalker thriller it’s actually an ambitious and smart psychological drama with only hints of the genre elements of thriller and horror (the film probably has the ugliest jump scare of the year). Even after the end, the film is a fable with lots of empty spaces that could be easily filled with fairly different versions of the events, which makes for post-viewing debates. Certainly, a surprise from first-time director Joel Egerton, I hope he’ll get back behind the cameras soon.

The rating is relatively low, but it doesn’t mean that I want to scare people away from this compilation of stories (or rather, a series of shorts, some of which are less than a minute long). Some of the stories are really good, for instance "The F*cking Creepy Kid In Apartment B" has a great idea. Basically, it’s something like The ABCs of Death, but cheaper, and everyone will find something to their taste, but as “film” proper it can’t really be rated.

A film like this, which in a predictable way arrives at a predictable conclusion - though without a single stumble or hesitation in execution - can’t be 105 minutes long. It really doesn’t work, it’s almost unwatchable. The ideal run in this case would be slightly more than 70 minutes, and I would give it as much as 4 stars, because Macneill does have talent, which he shows in many scenes. Unfortunately, he also shows in many scenes that he doesn’t have the script to justify their existence.