Shelby Oaks: Taking Cinematic Tension to New Heights
Shelby Oaks is the debut film from Chris Stuckmann (as writer/director). Yes, the Chris Stuckmann of YouTube movie reviewer fame. He has been talking about his dream of making a movie on his channel for years, and all I can say is congratulations, Chris. This is a hell of a first outing, and I look…
DonnaThe Black Phone: 2 Movies, 1 (Very) Short Story
The Black Phone 2 just entered theaters this past weekend. The Black Phone short story does not have a sequel. This concerned me. I find generally that movies based on books do not need to be expanded upon. *cough, Jurassic Park.* The source material is all you need. So I headed to The Black Phone…
DonnaThe Long Walk: The Book, the Movie, the Existential Dread
I finally saw Stephen King’s The Long Walk this past weekend and finished the book a few days later. (I know, but the movie was about to leave theaters, so I had to sandwich my viewing in between reading the book.) It follows a group of boys (young men in the movie) chosen by the…
DonnaThe Conjuring Last Rites - Plot Review/Summary
Holy crap did The Conjuring Last Rites make a boatload of money. Opening weekend, it did an astonishing $84 million at the box office, giving it the #3 place among horror movies. (If you’re curious, numbers 1 and 2 are IT and IT: Chapter 2. Globally it surpassed those numbers) I saw it opening weekend…
DonnaThe Nun 2 Plot Summary. Introducing Demon Frenchie.
The Nun 2 is the last Conjuring movie until September. You know the drill. If you haven’t seen it already, check out The Nun 2 here. Welcome to France! It’s time to clean up all the leftovers after church. As I kid, I was endlessly disappointed that this was less of a snack and more…
DonnaThe Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It - No Devil’s in This One
This movie did nothing for me. I wasn’t scared; I wasn’t interested. I never gave one single crap. I don’t know if this is a particularly uninteresting outing for the franchise, Rotten Tomatoes rated it as 56%, but I couldn’t get into it. My voice notes are always a mess of snark and judgement, but…
DonnaAnnabelle Comes Home: A Trilogy Comes to an End With a Fizzle
The trilogy of demon doll conduits ends with Annabelle Comes Home. Probably. They trot this doll out in every one of these movies and even IRL take her out for the occasional meet and greet. Girly is the cash cow of the Conjuring Universe and they know it. It’s never safe to assume she’s done.…
DonnaThe Curse of La Llorona: The One They Pretended Wasn’t in the Conjuring Universe
The Conjuring treated this one differently. In that, they didn’t bother to tell anyone that it was part of the Conjuring Universe. Technically, you could figure it out before seeing the movie, but since you basically needed Loraine’s psychic powers to do so, I’m not counting that. Since the Conjuring treated this one differently, so…
DonnaThe Nun: The Conjuring’s Big Scary Demon Wins
The Nun was the Conjuring’s big, bad, overarching evil demon. As an audience, we’ve been seeing her throughout the franchise. She’s been built up as the most evil, hardest to defeat of all the terrors in the Warren’s long history of paranormal investigation. The Nun is the one who threatened Ed’s life. By the time…
DonnaAnnabelle Creation: Unexpectedly Frightening, Unexpectedly Great
This was the real surprise outing in this franchise. Annabelle was lackluster. There rarely was a moment of real tension and the story didn’t really grab the audience. But Annabelle Creation is a whole different story. From the cinematography to the acting, to the story, everything in this movie just works together perfectly to create…
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