Stylish but barely mediocre overall
... View MoreBest movie of this year hands down!
... View MoreAt first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.
... View MoreIt’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.
... View MoreWhy would you make a film where nothing occurs within the first 60 minutes? I can see that the directors are trying to show the character development, but in a horror film, it should never take this long to show a characters development. It's a slasher script! Get to the slashing! The entire 90 minutes was crucial! You could spot the twisted ending from a mile away! The plot was also unrealistic. What group of teenage kids go to a museum what seems to be in the middle of nowhere to study the industrial revolution? Then on the way home the bus breaks down and they encounter a maniac with an pick axe? .. Kill me now! It sounds like a regular teen slasher but is really hard to stick with until the idiotic ending. It's like the whole cast was only in it for exchange of Bitcoins... There is no gore or nudity. The only type of blood in this is the blood splattered on the camera, which was clearly from visual effects. It never shows the reaper actually killing anyone and tries to take the slow walking, I'm chasing you scenes from Friday the 13th. This is definitely a B-list movie that shouldn't have ever made it to HBO. It should've been on Sy-Fy or Chiller. Do not waste your time watching this. Life is too short to spend watching crap movies such as this one.
... View MoreAfter getting involved in a bus crash on the way home from a field trip, a group of teens find themselves stuck at a haunted amusement park with a deranged, mystical killer killing them off one-by-one and forcing them to find an obscure method of survival.This turned out to be quite a fun and enjoyable slasher that features a lot of really exciting features. One of the better elements here is the fact that this one manages to get a lot of mileage out of the creepy amusement park setting with the nightmarish scenario of only being exposed to a few select parts of the park and no matter what continually returning to the same area over and over again, all of which just makes this seem more like a dream than anything but frankly adds to a chilling vibe that washes over this section of the film. That this is where the film pretty much starts offing the characters one-by-one in rather gruesome detail is where it starts getting really good, with a lot of rather fun and exciting elements coming into play due to that with a lot of pretty chilling stalking scenes, some decent escape attempts and a series of pretty violent deaths all brought upon due to the killer's use of a pick-axe as the weapon of choice here. It adds up, along with the rather demented killer and innate sense of hopelessness to turn into a rather fine slasher more often than not. While those are the good elements, it still suffers from some pretty big flaws, including the fact that this one tends to employ the exact same gimmick as several other films do right down to the very same mode of killing done here, which is a major plot-point but is nonetheless taken from another film series entirely and rather the back-story of the killer's identity is changed around. That tends to make it feel like a rip-off more so than as an original feature, which wouldn't be as bad if the low-budget origins weren't at play. Being so cheap means that the look of this is very cramped and confined, there's not a lot of big, extended sequences and the make-up effects don't always come off as good as they should. All-in-all, though, this one seems to have more going for it than not.Rated R: Graphic Violence, Graphic Language and hints of child abuse.
... View MoreDon't waste your time or money on this completely unremarkable, unoriginal, utterly dreary, relatively bloodless mess of a film. Granted the latter wasn't an issue for me as I saw it streaming on Netflix, but I digress. This rancid half-baked little horror tale of stereotypical clichéd 'teenagers' running afoul of a serial killer in a deserted carnival is somehow even worse than that description would seemingly entail. Furthermore, while technically not even reaching an hour and a half of running time, it felt much longer due to its sheer awfulness. Poor Tony Todd deserves better. And don't even get me started on the ending.
... View MoreJack the Reaper is very simple, almost minimalistic teenage horror / slasher. The exposition is somewhat long, but overall it is very good flick.Expect no complexity - just eery atmosphere of deserted carnival in the middle of the desert. The simple pure decadence of the place is definitely worth watching, especially if you do love ghost town stories or Wild West horror stories. The only lighted place in totally dark desert, scary, chilling, "behind the line". It was both beautiful and freaky. I loved the setting, seriously I loved that! Surprisingly enough there are even some lovely details that might be easily overlooked. Remember that little girl at the museum that looks at the photograph and said "I have seen that man"? Remember that they say "you are dead if the Jack has eyes on you"? And have you noticed that the policewoman told "This is the second crash this night?" Lovely, isn't it? The plot is not that revolutionary but it is acceptable and surprising enough as well - and the Jack is seriously scary. The special effects are very good for such minimalistic concept and the gore is enough to grab a beer and just enjoy the evening. I would definitely recommend that - it is not revolutionary, but very classic in the best sense of the word!
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