Dementia Movie Review: Like a Really Good Book You Can't Wait to Finish

Runtime: 90 minutes

Release Date: December 4, 2015

Rating: NR

Director: Mike Testin

Dementia opens with a war scene that shows a young man in the midst of battle before jumping to the present day. George is an older man who enjoys living on his own and playing chess over the phone with his friend Sam. When he hears a commotion outside, he looks out and sees two guys picking on a kid on a bike. He grabs his gun, fires it into the air, scares the bullies off, and then talks with the kid they bullied. The only odd thing is that he mistakenly refers to the kid as his own son.

After suffering a stroke, George also learns that he has dementia. His son, Jerry, and his granddaughter, Shelby, come to stay with him and decide what to do. Though Shelby is interested in learning more about her grandfather, Jerry just wants to put him in a home and move on with his life. He explains that his dad was mean and abusive and that after one particularly bad fight, his mom packed him up and took off. George built the house he lives in with his own two hands in the hopes that they would come back.

Michelle shows up on the doorstep and claims that the hospital sent her to check on George. Jerry then hires her to stay and look after George. It doesn't take long before Michelle begins telling George about things he did that he cannot remember. She claims that he started sleepwalking and leaving the house at night as well as making messes and picking fights with her for no reason. When George tries to fight back, she drugs him and tells his family that he's just exhibiting symptoms of dementia.

One night, George wakes up covered in blood and finds his cat mutilated. Michelle claims that he did it during a fit in the middle of the night, even though he loved that cat. Jerry things it's a little strange, but Shelby thinks it's suspicious and doesn't trust Michelle. When Michelle refuses to let friends visit and even stops Shelby from seeing him, the granddaughter decides to follow her and learn her secrets. George slowly begins having flashbacks to his time in the war and wondering what is real and what is a symptom of his dementia.

I don't say this a lot, but this was an extremely good film. Dementia is kind of like that mystery book that you start reading and have to keep telling yourself not to jump to the end and ruin it for you. I literally wanted to go online and see what happened because I was starting to doubt myself and doubt George too. The director does a really good job of setting things up in a way that makes you wonder if George is actually a reformed bad guy or whether he's still a bad guy at heart and whether Michelle is actually crazy or if she's just trying to help him. It puts you in the head of someone suffering from dementia because you don't know what is real or who you can trust.

Though Dementia got some surprisingly bad reviews online, it is a solid horror movie. The end to this film actually left me with my mouth hanging open as I tried to process everything. You'll never look at older people the same way after watching this one.

Don't Breathe Movie Review – Think Twice Before Robbing Someone

Runtime: 88 minutes

Release Date: August 26, 2016

Rating: R

Director: Fede Alvarez

Rocky wants nothing more than to escape the horrors of Detroit and take her little sister to California. As someone with no job and no real goals though, that's pretty hard to do. Luckily, she has her friends Alex and Money. Alex's dad owns a security system, and they steal from some of those clients and fence the goods to make extra cash. When the buyer starts offering them less than they think they deserve, they decide to do one last major haul.

Norman, referred to as the Blind Man, is a veteran and a widow. He lost his daughter after a woman accidentally killed her in a car accident. The Blind Man received a settlement of $300,000 that he supposedly keeps in his house and never uses. With Alex's tech devices, they think they can get in, grab the money, and get out before the old man ever notices they're inside.

Things almost instantly go wrong. Not only does the Blind Man have almost supernatural hearing, but he manages to kill – or nearly kill – one of the three within a few minutes of them entering his house. The other two soldier on in the hopes of finding money only to discover that he kidnapped the woman responsible for his daughter's death and keeps her locked in his basement. When he flips off the power to the house, the two “heroes” must find a way to compete with the Blind Man on his own turf.

Don't Breathe suffers from the same fate as any horror film released during a poor or boring season. It gets such great reviews off the bat that unless you see it within weeks of its opening, there's almost no point in ever seeing it. The hype builds up so much that you expect it to be the best horror film ever. The same thing happened with Insidious and with the more recent It Follows.

The film does have some terrifying moments and some disgusting moments too. When you learn why the Blind Man captured the woman and what he plans to do with Rocky, anyone with a vagina is the audience will wince and maybe even whimper. The scenes set in the basement and other parts of the house when the lights go out are also a little disturbing because you cannot necessarily see the action and because you have no way of knowing what might come next.

My problem might be that Rocky reminds me a little too much of those stereotypical kids that come from a bad home. Though she wants to change her life, she only wants to take the easy way out. Instead of maybe moving away from Detroit with her sister and getting a job, she just wants to rob people and save up the cash to move. Alex isn't any better. His dad seemingly has one of the only good jobs left in the city, but he's perfectly willing to steal from his dad's clients and maybe even ruin his business to help himself.

Worried that maybe I built up Don't Breathe too much in my head, I looked at my boyfriend at the end to get his opinion. “That was weird, not bad, but kind of weird and not that great.” As someone who frequently says similar things about flicks with a budget the size of a high school musical, that's not exactly high praise...

The Good Neighbor Movie Review

Runtime: 98 minutes

Release Date: March 13, 2016

Rating: NR

Director: Kasra Farahani

Sean and Ethan are two typical high school students who decide to play a “prank” on their elderly neighbor, Harold. According to Ethan, Harold is a horrible man that formerly beat his wife and eventually killed the poor woman. As the more tech-savvy of the two, Sean agrees to help Ethan set up cameras around Harold's house and to do random things that make it look like the old man's house is haunted.

Though some of their friends are less than thrilled about their plans, Ethan in particular points out that Harold deserves it, if only for what he did to his poor wife. They do things like make the lights in his house turn on and off and the television suddenly come to life. When Harold seems defensive about his basement, the boys even call the cops and report that they heard a woman screaming. The cops investigate and find nothing.

As they ramp up their hauntings, Harold seems to slowly lose his mind. Not only is he defensive of his basement, but he particularly freaks out when he hears a bell ringing. Harold ignores an older woman who shows at his doorstep to see him, and he stops leaving the house like he did in the past.

While all this happens, The Good Neighbor inter-cuts a few scenes of a courtroom battle. We see Ethan's mother, the cop who came to the house, and others. They talk about the body found in the house and whether someone is to blame. It isn't until the last few minutes that we learn who they found in the house as well as the fates of both our main characters.

The Good Neighbor is an interesting film, but it's hard for me to say if I actually liked it that much. James Caan is perfectly cast as Harold the neighbor. It's sometimes hard to believe that the man is as old as he is, so seeing him here was definitely eye-opening. If you ever watched ER, you'll notice one of the main characters from that show popping up as his former wife in flashbacks.

Without ruining anything for those who haven't seen it, this film does a good job of setting up Harold's backstory. Instead of just showing the whole story at once, the director smartly reveals just a little at a time such as his wife crying frequently, why the sound of the bell sets him off, and even how and why he got the cat that the guys see on their cameras.

The most realistic thing about this flick is the teenagers themselves. Far too many films have teenagers talking and acting the way the adult writers expect, but Sean and Ethan, as well as all their friends, actually seem like teenagers. You can believe that the two, especially Sean, would do something this mean and stupid just to have a little fun.

While the courtroom scenes are distracting at times, those scenes add to the overall plot of the film and will keep you invested and wanting to know what happens in the end. Once you learn the connection between Harold and one of the teens, the last scene in the film and some of the other plot details will suddenly make a lot more sense.

The Good Neighbor is currently streaming on Netflix.

Trespass Movie Review – Typical Home Invasion Flick

Length: 91 minutes

Release Date: October 21, 2011

Rating: R

Director: Joel Schumacher

Sarah (Nicole Kidman) is you typical poor rich housewife. She's married to Kyle who works as a diamond broker and has a teenage daughter named Avery too. Kyle is on the road so much that Sarah finds herself spending more and more time home alone. She tells her daughter that she can't go to a party later that night, but the girl sneaks out of the house and goes anyway. That night, three men and a woman break into the house and hold the couple hostage.

The men reveal that they had an inside man working around the house the whole time. Jonah did some work on the house and learned that Kyle likely had a large number of cash and diamonds on hand. He also developed one hell of a crush on Sarah and fantasizes about the two of them running away together. Kyle reveals that despite making a call earlier in the night about a large number of diamonds he needed to sell that he actually has no money at all. He must also reveal to his wife that the diamonds she already owns are fakes.

Kyle claims that he lost so much money during the recession and as they had their large mansion built that he had to sell her precious stones to stay afloat. She's shocked, but so too are the robbers who need to get as much money as possible that same night. When Avery comes home early from the party after a bad encounter with a guy from school, she finds herself caught up in the middle of the robbery. With time ticking away, no one knows who will make it out alive.

I have a tendency to have way too many things in my Netflix list at any given time. I sometimes get it down to around 450 items, but it's usually closer to 475 or higher. While flipping through movies and shows in the middle, I remembered hearing about Trespass and wanting to see it. Now that I have, I probably could have left it there a lot longer.

Here's the thing, as great as Nic Cage is sometimes, he is sometimes really bad. Seeing him as a rich diamond broker is pretty hard to swallow. Seeing him married to a woman like Nicole Kidman makes things even worse. The two of them have so little chemistry that I had a hard time rooting for them to make it out alive. Given that she had way more chemistry with the actor playing Jonah, I actually got to the point where I wanted his story about the two of them having an affair to be true and actually wanted them to run away together.

All the other characters are pretty much the stereotypical characters you expect to see in a movie like this. You have the rough guy who isn't afraid of murdering everyone to save his own ass, the crack whore who just wants her next fix, and the annoying teenage girl who seems to screw up everything over and over again. The characters were so bad that I had a hard time finding anyone I wanted to root for, and I actually didn't really care if the house blew up and killed them all accidentally.

Despite having some big names, Trespass was an incredibly generic movie. There is very little to remember about the movie after seeing it.

4closed Movie Review – Jamie Kennedy Be Creepy

Runtime: 90 minutes
Release Date: August 9, 2013
Rating: NR
Director: Nick Lyon


4closed opens with a realtor preparing a walk through of a newly foreclosed home. Somehow, all the doors in the house lock at the same time, and she can't escape. A dark figure comes out of the shadows and brutally murders her before she can get out.


It then jumps to a family out shopping for a new home. Since I can't remember the names, I'll just use their real names. James Denton and his wife Marlee Matlin need to find a new house for them and their daughter Christina DeRosa. After looking at multiple homes that are too expensive or too small (for three people, WTF?), they finally find the house of their dreams. The realtor tells them that it was a foreclosure that the bank foreclosed on after the owner died. They fall in love and decide to move in right away.


When moving day arrives, they find Jamie Kennedy waiting inside. He tells them that it's his house and shows paperwork that backs up his claims. The police can't do anything until they straighten things out, so the family move into a hotel. Marlee's dad, Paul Sorvino, makes it clear that he isn't happy and has them move into his large house.


Jamie's lawyer drops the case when he learns that his mother left everything to a bunch of charities. I don't think the writer really understands how foreclosures work. If she owned the house, the bank wouldn't foreclose on it, but the movie wants us to believe that she owned it and just left it to a charity. He moves out, but as soon as the family moves in, things go wrong. James, who is a recovering alcoholic, suddenly discovers rumors swirling that he started using again, and poor Christina discovers that her new online friend really isn't who she thought it was.


4closed sounds like some awful and cheesy movie, but damn if I didn't like it! There's something nice about seeing Kennedy go back to his roots. The one thing I kept thinking when I saw Scream 4 was that I wish he somehow could have appeared or that they would at least mention him. With his scruffy beard and crazy eyes, he really does seem like someone who could hardwire a house to obey his commands and live underneath a home with no one knowing.


This movie plays like one of those cheesy horror films that landed straight on video during the 1990s or even the 1980s, but there's something almost refreshing about that. The movie doesn't go all out with the blood and guts, and most killings take place off screen. It asks you to think about how those killings happened in your own mind. It also has a number of things that you know will happen, like Christina making a new friend online. You know that it isn't really that cute guy from her new school, but you also can't wait to see what happens or how she learns the truth.


4closed could easily be just another forgettable little film from The Asylum, but there was something about the movie that I really liked. It's easily one of the better movies from the company that I've watched recently.

The Purge Movie Review – "Now Get the Hell Out of My House."

Runtime: 85 minutes
Release Date: June 7, 2013
Rating: R
Director: James DeMonaco


James (Ethan Hawke, "Gattica") is a salesman responsible for selling a large number of alarm systems around town. On his way home from work, he stops to talk to some of his neighbors, warning them to lock their doors and stay inside for the night. James lives in a time where unemployment rates are low and crime drops because of a night known as The Purge. For twelve hours every year, American citizens can go anything they want for those hours with no worries of what it might mean. Theft, rape, and even murder are all allowed.


James arrives home to his wife Mary, son Charlie, and teenage daughter Zoey. Mary lets him know that Zoey isn't happy with him making her end her relationship with a slightly older boy named Henry, and his son seems content to just play with a creepy radio controlleve vehicle he made from an old doll with a camera attached. While the family prepares to lock down their house for the night, Mary has an encounter with a neighbor who makes it clear they aren't happy with the family flaunting their new wealth. Zoey takes the time to make out with her boyfriend for a few minutes before sending him home for the night.


As they lock down the house, Charlie expresses some doubt and concern with what The Purge means. When he hears a man screaming for help outside and a pack of people following the man, he makes the decision to unlock the doors and let him inside. The pack then demands that they either release the man or they'll come inside and get him. James wants to send him on his way, but his family disagrees. It doesn't help that Zoey's boyfriend attempts to kill James, which leads to James killing him. While all this goes on, the people outside wait for help to arrive so they can break into the house.


The Purge is one of those movies that I wanted to see from the moment I watched the trailer, but now that I watched it, I'm glad I waited. It's one of those movies that you just want to watch as you scream at every character to stop being so fucking stupid. First, there's Charlie. He's clearly old enough that he's lived through multiple Purges, and he even mentions that they studied it in school. He knows how everything operates, but that doesn't stop him from opening the door to save a random stranger. Even when the people outside make it clear that they will kill him and his family, he thinks he needs to save that man.


Then, there's Zoey. Not only does she continue seeing a man her parents don't approve of and lets him sneak into her house, she doesn't notice the cryptic comments that make it clear he won't just walk away. Once the shootout with her father occurs, she spends most of the movie hiding upstairs and running around like a crazy person instead of taking the time to check on her family or even respond when her mother calls for her.


It doesn't help that Hawke is incredibly unlikeable in this movie. He is so smug that I wanted to punch him in the throat multiple times. He is always right, everyone else is wrong, and there's no middle ground. While I agree with his wishes to protect his family, he doesn't see anything wrong with bragging about how money he made that year and how their house is better than all the other houses in the neighborhood. He also doesn't take the time to let his family know that their alarm system isn't 100% safe until a threat arrives.


The Purge didn't have nearly as much action as I expected. The trailers made it seem like the plot involved a game of cat and mouse between a family and the people stalking them, but most of the good moments appeared in the trailer. There is also a "twist" that you must be blind not to notice. There is so much foreshadowing and mentions of the neighbors that most people will find themselves just waiting until the twist finally happens. Though interesting at times, The Purge didn't really make much of an impression on me.