Stalker Movie Review – Nightmares Don't End When You Wake Up

Runtime: 77 minutes
Release Date: October 17, 2011
Rating: R/NR?
Director: Martin Kemp


Paula is a best selling write struggling with her next book. After the urging of her publicist/agent Sara, she decides to spend some time in her old family home. Everyone thinks that getting her away from it all for some time will help her focus and get her to buckle down and write. Not long after arriving, she meets the housekeeper who will take care of the home and her needs.


Things change when Paula meets Linda. As her new personal assistant, Linda promises to do whatever it takes to help her write, but it quickly becomes clear that Linda has some darker ideas in mind. Between a sudden injury that never seems to go away to the fact that Linda always seems to be popping up out of nowhere, Paula finds that getting away from it all might be the biggest mistake that she ever made.


I'll confess something here: this movie was hard to follow. I sat down to watch it with my roommate after watching Hell Baby (review is coming soon!), but a lot of the time, we watch movies while chatting about other stuff and playing online. This time, we were both watching the movie the whole time. At one point, he looked over and asked me if I had any idea what was going on, and I had to admit that I wasn't sure.


The problem is that Stalker tends to jump around a lot. One minute we're watching a scene of Paula and Linda having a conversation, then someone else will appear, it will jump to a scene of Sara talking to Paula's doctor, then a conversation between two completely different people, and then back to Paula. Given the ending of the film, the jumping around makes sense. The director wants to keep you on your toes and unsure of what's happening, but it just made the movie hard for me to follow.


Despite the jumping around, it's easy for anyone to predict the ending. My roommate very casually said, "I bet X, Y, and Z" at one point in the movie, I agreed, and damn if that isn't exactly what happened. If the director hoped that the ending would surprise anyone, he probably shouldn't have used so much foreshadowing in the earlier parts of the film. It left me unsatisfied and feeling like I just watched a made for television movie.

Magic Magic – Bad, Bad, and Bad Again

Runtime: 97 minutes
Release Date: July 26, 2013
Rating: R
Director: Sebastian Silver


Alicia and her best friend/cousin Sara (Emily Browning, The Uninvited) decide to visit a remote area of South America for their vacation. Sara looks forward to the trip and introducing her cousin to her boyfriend Augustin and his sister Barbara. When they arrive, they find that the duo brought along their new foreign exchange student friend Brink (Michael Cera), who clearly seems unhinged from the very beginning.


Sara receives a phone call about some problems with her school, and she leaves for what should be a short period of time. Left alone with a group of people she barely knows, Alicia slowly starts coming apart at the scenes. Brink seems especially interested in her and willing to do whatever it takes to make her his, while the other characters are mainly there to make Alicia more unsettled. As the film progresses, more weird things happen that make the viewers wonder if these things actually happen or are just a part of her mind.


After watching Magic Magic, I wished that I hadn't wasted an entire $1.20 to rent it from Redbox. I really did think it was that bad. It was one of those films that I finished watching and didn't say anything because I wasn't sure how anyone else felt. My roommate looked at me and said, "What was that shit?" and my other friend's reaction was, "Why did you make us watch this?"


That was why I was so surprised when I saw that it had such good reviews online. Did we all watch the same movie? Magic Magic was just plain bad. There was literally nothing about this movie that I enjoyed. Everyone in the film seemed cast for the wrong parts, and the movie itself was just plain confusing. I get that some films want to make you question reality and consider whether what you saw was real, but this one just left me scratching my head. It's literally the only time that I wanted to take a movie back and demand a refund from Redbox.

Identity Movie Review – "As I Was Going Up The Stairs, I Met a Man Who Wasn't There."

Runtime: 90 minutes
Release Date: April 25, 2003
Rating: R
Director: James Mangold


Malcolm Rivers is bat shit crazy, which explains why the serial killer is sitting in a room on a dark and stormy night. After introducing us to this character, the movie jumps to the middle of nowhere. A group of people, including Ed, a former police officer played by John Cusack, Samuel, a cop transporting a prisoner, a prostitute on the run, a young married couple, a famous actress, and a married couple with their young son, all find themselves stuck in a motel run by the unbelievably sexy John Hawkes.


As the rain falls down around them, they realize that they can't go anywhere for the night, which complicates things given that one of the group is near death after being hit by Ed's limousine. When the actress goes missing, they discover that a room key was left behind with her clothing. The group also learns that they all share the same birthday, but it doesn't take long before they discover that there is something else darker happening and that they might not all make it through the night.


I love, love, love Identity. While flipping through Netflix one night and learning that my roommate never saw it, I instantly put it on and made him sit down and watch the movie that same night. It's one of the few movies that I bought brand new when it first came out and without hearing a lot about it just because of Cusack. Sadly, Cusack isn't his best here. He pales in comparison to most of the other actors, including Amanda Peet. Though I'm not a fan of her work, she does a great job as a hooker with a heart of gold who just wants something more out of her life.


Identity also has a number of twists and turns that make you actually sit down and focus on the movie. Just when you think you know what's going on, you learn that you were wrong. It twists the identity of the killer, the people in the film, and even who the characters are, and it has one of the best and most talented casts in horror films. John Hawkes, who I obviously have quite the crush on, always plays those weird and quirky and sometimes smarmy characters, and he does it best here.


If for some strange reason you still haven't seen Identity, go watch it on Netflix. Seriously, go watch it right now. I'll wait.

"Escapee" Movie Review – He's Out and Can't Be Stopped

Runtime: 98 minutes

Release Date: September 2, 2011

Rating: R

Director: Campion Murphy

Abby is a psychology major who feels uncomfortable when her college class takes a field trip to an institution. Despite reassurances that the students won't get anywhere near the patients, Jaxson finds a way to get close to her. After the orderlies drag him off, she feels a little shaken and just wants to go home.

She and her two roommates settle down for the night, and Abby starts to forget about what happened, but Jaxson can't forget about her. He manages to escape from the institution, and he heads off in the hopes of tracking down Abby. At the same time, several police officers are hot on his trail including one who has a connection to both Abby and Jaxson.

The best thing about "Escapee" is seeing the number of actors who pop up in a few scenes. Dominic Purcell plays Jaxson, while Danny Nucci shows up as a police officer. Kadeem Hardison also turns up as a cop, and Faith Ford is the one cop who seems to actually give a damn about an escaped inmate.

Once you get past seeing the different actors and wondering what you know them from, the story seems to falter. Purcell is a great psychopath, but his character becomes grating at times. There are only so many scenes that you can handle of someone talking gibberish about a random girl he just met before you want to scream. Scott Elrod does an adequate job playing yet another police officer, but after he keeps popping up to warn the girls of any problems, you start to wonder why he isn't out there looking for the escapee.

"Escapee" is one of those films that you watch once and forget. I'm sure that I'll come across it in a few months and flip it over to read the back before realizing that I already saw it.

Apartment 4E – Give Me Back My Time!

Runtime: 87 minutes

Release Date: 2012

Rating: NR

Director: Russell Leigh Sharman

Piper is one of the most annoying people in the world. She's a shut in who never leaves her apartment because of a medical condition, and she has no patience for anyone else, which is odd given that no one could possibly spend an extended period of time with her. At some point in the recent past, Piper made a new friend online named Mollie. The two had a close relationship, but things are about to change.

A man knocks on her door, saying his name is John and that he's Mollie's brother. He asks to talk to her, and she lets him in, but she also lets him know that she doesn't trust him. Though he answers some of her questions about Mollie, she can't shake the feeling that there's more than meets the eye with him. The more time they spend together, the more she realizes that she can't trust John and that John might not be who he says he is.

I've talked about contained movies before, and "Apartment 4E" is a great example of what not to do. I hate to give it a bad review because it does have a great story attached to it. The film was actually the result of a Kickstarter campaign that helped fund the film. It still had a low budget though, which led to the entire film taking place inside a single apartment.

When a film can't rely on large sets or expensive backdrops, it needs to focus on character development and great acting. Piper is such an unlikeable character that it was hard to sit through 87 minutes of her. I read a review that talked about how viewers needed to understand that she was bi-polar and suffering a breakdown, but I don't think that's a good excuse.

This is the type of woman who immediately feels suspicious from the moment someone knocks on her door. When he tells her that Mollie sent him, she instantly thinks he's lying. She then spends the rest of the film alternating between wanting to kill him and wanting to kill herself. "Apartment 4E" wasn't what I expected, but I can't imagine sitting down to watch it again now that I know the plot.

"Imaginary Friend" Movie Review: Sometimes It's Not All in Your Head

Runtime: 86 minutes

Release Date: June 2, 2012

Rating: PG

Director: Richard Gabai

"Imaginary Friend" opens with a young girl playing outside with her best friend. As they run around the yard and frolic in the grass, it quickly becomes clear that Emma is real but her little friend is a figment of her imagination. After her abusive father kills her mother, the movie jumps to the present day. Emma (Lacey Chabert) now lives with her husband Brad (Ethan Embry, "Vacancy") who seems to act just like her father once did.

Emma inherited a large sum of money from her parents' estate, and Brad has control over everything. There's something about how she spent time in an institution and how she can barely function. She seems content to just stay at home and paint, but after some time, she decides that she's ready to get back into the world again. When Brad discovers that Emma no longer needs his help and that he doesn't have control over her accounts, she suddenly starts seeing visions of her former playmate, who may or may not be real.

I'm not entirely sure, but I'm guessing that "Imaginary Friend" is a Lifetime movie. It just tends to play that way based on the acting and the sets. As someone who appreciates a good television movie, I won't hold that against it. It's actually a fun little movie in fact. I made a comment to my boyfriend about how I wanted it to end, and damn if it didn't actually end that way. It's one of those films that has several endings so there's one twist, then another, and then it has a completely different twist at the very end. I get the feeling that this is one of those films that I’ll see when flipping through the channels and instantly want to stop and watch again.

Flashback AKA Mörderische Ferien AKA Murderous Vacation – German Horror Done Right

Runtime: 95 minutes

Release Date: April 6, 2000

Rating: R

Director: Michael Karen

Foreign horror films have a tendency to make me sit up and wonder what the hell is wrong with American horror directors. "Flashback," which also goes by several other names, is one of those films.

The film opens up with scenes of a young girl named Jeanette spending time with her parents. While everything seems normal, a man breaks into the house and eventually murders both of her parents in front of her. "Flashback" then jumps several years into the future. After spending years in an institution, Jeanette is now a young woman, and her doctor thinks that she is ready to live outside the institution walls. He finds her a job working with a friend's step-children and teaching them French.

From the moment that Jeanette arrives at their house, something seems odd. All three of the "children" are actually close to her age, and none of them seem particularly excited about meeting her. She has to walk around the entire house just to find someone who can let her in, and by the time she does, someone steals her bags off the front porch. Lissy, Melissa, and Leon keep leaving her at home to go out and party, and they frequently mention their dislike of their stepfather.

Jeannette also has to deal with the housekeeper, who thinks that she needs to rule them all with an iron fist. She doesn't approve of Jeannette for the way she dresses, the fact that she actually goes into town with her charges, and her blossoming relationship with Leon. That relationship takes Jeannette by surprise, and it quickly becomes clear that she never really dated anyone before. After one particular party at the house, Jeannette starts suffering flashbacks of what happened to her family. The more she works with the teens and the closer she grows to Leon, the more it becomes clear that there is something wrong.

"Flashback" is an excellent movie because it offers several different possible explanations for what's going on, and you won't know exactly what happened until the very end. Is the man who killed her parents back for vengeance? Does the unseen step-father have something to do with the events? Is Jeannette the crazy one? Are the kids involved? This is the kind of film where I kept thinking that I knew what was going on, but then there was another twist, and I was wrong. It's also the type of film where you actually need to pay attention or you might miss out on something special.

I was so excited about seeing this movie that I actually recommended it to multiple people. I even spoiled it for my best friend by telling him the whole plot and the ending because I didn't see it coming. I had the chance to watch the film on Netflix, which thankfully provided a dubbed version (unlike "Battle Royale 2," which I will probably never watch because I seldom have time to sit down and watch a film with subtitles), but the site recently took the film down. If you get a chance to watch it, please do.