Netflix’s “The Devil All The Time” is the perfect spooky movie to watch at home

November 12, 2020KCR

If you’re looking for a spooky thriller to watch, Netflix’s “The Devil All The Time” is the perfect movie for you. It’s based on the book written by Donald Ray Pollock, which is about a young man trying to overcome adversities set in his small town. There are serial killers on the run while a preacher takes advantage of his role in church.

In the movie, you’ll recognize well known actors such as Tom Holland, Robert Pattinson, Bill Skarsgård, and many more. It takes place right when World War II ends and begins with how the main character’s parents meet. I don’t want to expose any spoilers so you’ll get a chance to watch it, but just be prepared for some creepy and confusing scenes.

As I was watching the movie, I really enjoyed seeing Tom Holland take on a different role rather than being a superhero. Throughout each scene, they were mostly dark, gloomy, and suspenseful scenes that captured the sense of “watching your back” knowing how mysterious the town was. There are twists and turns that keep you on your feet. Although it is 2 hours long, it’s the type of movie you want to see until the end.

The film does contain scenes that could be disturbing to some people, but overall it’s a great film to watch. The movie touches on topics of faith, abuse of religion, family, and corruption. Personally I love watching movies that I get to come up with my own conclusions or stick the pieces together, and “The Devil All The Time” executes that. However, I’m still confused on some aspects of the film, but maybe that’s why there’s a book to read about it.

So if you’re looking for the next spooky movie to binge watch on Netflix, I recommend “The Devil All The Time.”

Written by: Ariadna Rodriguez Perez

Photos by: Netflix’s Youtube Trailer of “The Devil All The Time”

The Invisible Man: Movie Review, Why It Works

March 18, 2020Danan Pacheco

Does The Invisible Man live up to the hype? Well seeing is believing (and although you can’t see the antagonist of this film), The Invisible Man breathes life into this once thought dead style of horror with compelling characters and suspense that will leave you on the edge of your seat and begging to see more!

WARNING: IF YOU WANT TO GO INTO THIS FILM WITH ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA OF WHAT IS HAPPENING READ CAREFULLY. THERE WILL BE A SPOILER WARNING WHEN MAJOR PLOT POINTS ARE DISCUSSED BUT IF YOU WANT NOTHING ABOUT THIS FILM TALKED ABOUT, COME BACK AFTER YOU WATCH THE MOVIE.

If you are still here, I commend you for your bravery. Let’s get into The Invisible Man.

Overview

The Invisible Man was released on February 28, 2020. It stars Elizabeth Moss as Cecilia Kass, a troubled woman who escapes an abusive relationship from Adrian Griffin, this manipulative scientific inventor played by Oliver Jackson-Cohen. Once she escapes, Cecilia is so terrified of being found by Adrian that she can’t even walk outside. This all changes when she finds out that Adrian has passed away and can’t hurt her anymore. She is able to start living her life without the constant fear of being watched… or so she thinks.

What this film does so well is that it plays with the audience’s perception of what’s happening to Cecilia. The first forty minutes of the film are a slow burn of odd happenings that take place in the house. From the stove turning on with no one near, to a knife falling off the table without a sound. As you watch this film you think at any moment this invisible entity could kill Cecilia. But the film makes it clear that it is not their goal to kill her. It’s to torment her.

Someone is torturing Cecilia throughout the story and the film uses that to make you feel just as paranoid. No one is willing to believe what is happening with Cecilia which infuriates you because you know she’s not crazy. You are rooting for her to prove that there is someone there, but the film makes you question maybe Cecilia is imagining this all. Then the film takes a hard left and makes it very clear to the audience and Cecilia that her suspicions were right.

What Makes It Work

The elements that make this horror/thriller movie work more than the atrocious The Mummy (2017) and Dracula Untold (2014), is that it does not try to be more than it is. Tom Cruise’s The Mummy wanted so badly to be the next big cinematic universe that would rival Marvel. But that was the film’s goal. Not to scare us, or to tell a unique story. It was to make money and be the next big thing. The Invisible Man is doing what I’m sure most modern horror films wanted to be, truly scary.

This film knows it’s a thriller that has a classic monster attached to it, so it tells a modernized version of what would make that idea so terrifying. A controlling and abusive partner that no one can see. If that isn’t symbolism, I don’t know what is.

If you are looking for a truly entertaining film that makes you question everything that you are watching on screen, go see this unseeable monster movie!

~If you watched the film and would like to see what I felt worked well and what didn’t, or you simply don’t care about spoilers, feel free to read below~

SPOILER WARNING

With a film called The Invisible Man, you know there is going to be some way the film explains how a person can be invisible. Magic? Invisible Spray? John Cena? Nope. This universe’s answer to how to make a man invisible is shown in the first scene in the background. A suit comprised of cameras that can cloak itself into its surroundings and be invisible to the unseen eye. Sure this is still a stretch. But it is the most believable reason to have a man be invisible in this modern revamp.

What Worked

I thought the premise of having Adrian be so determined to make Cecilia think he willing to fake his own death sickening. It made him more terrifying than any paranormal beings that have been put to screen over the last five years. Cecilia is also not an idiot and thinks her plans through which makes the movie so much better. She is so clever that at certain points in the film you have no idea what she is going to do!

What Did Not Work

At a certain point in the film, the invisible suit gets damaged and is shown that it is broken and can not become fully invisible anymore. But in the very next scene the suit is in perfect condition again. The invisible suit is covered in so much plot armor it is unstoppable, unless the film wants the suit to brake. It just made the final conflict a little inconsistent with what was established in other shots.

Hopefully, these mild spoilers were not enough to ruin the film for those of you who were daring enough to read this section before watching the film. Thank you for reading and I hope you come back for my next review, take care!

Written by: Danan Pacheco

Rambo: Last Blood – Illumination of PTSD

October 10, 2019Nils Ljungquist

Rambo: Last Blood is a film with an identity crisis that aims to highlight the struggle veterans face when dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder.

If you go into the newest Rambo film expecting the action-packed scenes of the 2008 release, you will be disappointed. This movie does not have the exuberant gunplay and the mythical Stallone that we have come to expect. John Rambo clearly shows the signs of wear and his age is at the forefront. The director chose many closeups which admittedly come off a bit silly more often than not. The Rambo presented appears to be in a settled state and is looking to lead a comfortable life. He trains horses if you can believe that and even forges his own blades. These tasks appear to be a coping mechanism for his PTSD.

Prevalence of PTSD in Rambo

PTSD is not something new to the Rambo films. The disorder has been front and center from the very inception of the series. Rambo in First Blood is a Vietnam War veteran and prisoner of war who returns to the United States. In the U.S. he faces harassment from the police force who, on default, considers him an untrustworthy vagrant. The physical abuse (he is hosed down while detained by the police) triggers a fight or flight response and he chooses fight.

Rambo attempts to cope with his PTSD through medication. Without revealing any spoilers, the new film also pits Rambo in a situation that prompts his exit from a semi-comfortable life. He, in one of the many zoom-ins, tosses down his medication and a majority of the action in the film follows this tipping point. This frustration mirrors much of the sentiment veterans still exhibit today.

PTSD Today

Like Rambo in the first film, veterans today continue to return from war not knowing how to adjust and cope with civilian life. The government also often falls short in offering resources to aid in the acclimation process. The fact that 16 veterans take their lives daily, and more than 50 veterans suffering from PTSD and seeking treatment from the Veterans Health Administration committed suicide in 2017 are testaments to the drastic need to improve a failing system.

Though this new installment to the Rambo franchise attempted to merge the internal struggle faced by soldiers found in the first movie with the action and explosions of the most recent movie, the result was lacking in both departments and leaves people wishing that direction went all-in on at least one.

A Wildly Inaccurate Summary of Avengers: Endgame

May 15, 2019Andrea Renney

The final film in Marvel’s Avengers series was highly anticipated and beloved by many – but not everyone in the theater felt this way.

In my almost 25 years on this planet (yikes), I have seen a total of two superhero movies. The first was Spider-Man (2002), which I remember seeing in the movie theater in my hometown at the age of 7. The second was Deadpool in 2016, also at that same theater with yellow shag carpet on the walls and a crystal chandelier in the “big theater” (the place only has two screens, which we would refer to as the “big theater” or the “small theater”). So as you might expect, I was counting down the days until Avengers: Endgame hit theaters where I would see it on opening night.

Just kidding. I didn’t even know this movie existed until April 24^th, when it was discussed on KCR’s own Brett & Mackee in the Morning. But you already knew that, because you undoubtedly listen to San Diego’s Best Morning Radio Show, as voted by the San Diego Union Tribune’s 2018 Reader’s Poll, every Wednesday morning from 10 to 12. As explained above, I’ve never seen any of the other Avengers movies. In fact, I’m not even sure how many there are. I’m going to go ahead and guess that there are twelve movies in the series. (Editor’s note: Andrea, how the heck are you so behind?)

When a fellow KCR member asked me, over Plant Power Fast Food, if I wanted to go to the 1:45 AM 3D showing of Avengers: Endgame that night, I agreed. Maybe it was just the vegan chicken nuggets altering my perception, but this sounded like a great idea to me. A three hour movie, a three hour SUPERHERO movie, at nearly 2 AM on a Thursday night/Friday morning. In the end, we decided on the 11:45 PM showing at AMC Fashion Valley. One sour beer and two hard kombuchas later, and we found ourselves in butter-soaked seats with plastic 3D glasses on our faces. “So it won’t be blurry,” the ticket-taker had informed us.

So here you go: my critical, sleep-deprived review of Avengers: Endgame. This is all surely inaccurate and likely offensive to fans of the series. I’m sorry. “I love you three thousand”.

A “Summary” of the Film

Avengers: Endgame opens with a scene of a family enjoying a nice lakeside picnic and some archery. I’ve already forgotten which character was the dad in this scene. Eventually the dad looks around and his family has disappeared. I think that if I had seen the other eleven Avengers movies I might have understood why this was happening. Instead, I figured aliens were involved somehow. As in, the antagonists in the other Avengers movies were aliens. (Editors note: At least you got that mostly right.)

So then I was introduced to the titular Avengers, I think. To me, the Avengers are Scarlett Johansson, Mark Ruffalo/The Hulk, Miley Cyrus’s husband’s brother, Chris Evans, a raccoon, Paul Rudd, and ~~Brett Michel’s father~~ Robert Downey Jr. If I’m being honest, it seems like Robert Downey Jr. carried the team in this movie, particularly by figuring out how to time travel. RDJ is a family man, though, and at first doesn’t want to get involved with this alien-fighting business. However, he relents and agrees to go to space with them despite having a young daughter. I bet you can guess what’s going to happen to his character at the end of the movie.

Why was time travel necessary for the Avengers? I’m not really sure. Paul Rudd spent five years of his life in another dimension, or something, while people in the real world kept living their lives. So I guess the Avengers needed to travel back in time to save Paul Rudd from this other dimension. In order to save Paul Rudd, the Avengers had to retrieve some magic stones from the past.

The Avengers split off into teams and travel into the past to retrieve the magic stones. Paul Rudd becomes tiny, there are two Captain Americas that fight each other (?), Tilda Swinton is on a rooftop. Obviously, this quest for the magic stones was the crux of the whole movie, so I apologize for reducing it to a two-sentence summary.

There’s a scene where RDJ and Chris Evans go back in time to a very All-American looking army base, and RDJ talks to a man who’s expecting a child with his wife. RDJ is very emotional when talking to this man, and hugs him goodbye despite having only just met him. I deduced that this man was actually RDJ’s father and his unborn child would grow up to be none other than Robert Downey Jr. Wikipedia tells me that my conclusion was correct. This, my friends, is what I like to call critical thinking and inference. Yes, I have taken a first-year TFM class.

Okay, what else? Scarlett Johannson dies. Another guy was maybe going to die but Scarlett sacrifices herself instead. I can’t even remember why she had to die – midway through the movie my eyes were definitely starting to close. There was a scary Grim Reaper-looking thing that gave these two a message. The robot woman was a double agent and helped the Big Evil Guy (not an alien) try to take over the world. Some other things happened.

Then there was a big battle scene! “Avengers, assemble!” That’s a direct quote from the film. A lot of other Marvel characters returned for the battle and everyone else in the theater made sounds of excitement and recognition as the camera panned over these characters. I nodded along as if I too understood the significance of this scene.

So the battle seems to be going okay and no one of importance has died yet (except Scarlett Johansson). Baby Spider-Man retrieves the Magic Glove and everything is looking great, but then Big Evil Guy gets the Magic Glove. RDJ confronts him about it (really carrying the team again) and Big Evil Guy tries to flex that he has the Magic Glove. Lo and behold, the Magic Glove is missing its magic stones, rendering it useless! Turns out, RDJ took the magic stones and now has his OWN Magic Glove. He then proclaims that he is Iron Man. This was a big reveal for me. Then he activates the stones or whatever and the bad guys turn to dust.

All of this was so overwhelming for me that I didn’t realize RDJ was dying. I’m not sure why he had to die, but I think it’s because he was a family man making the ultimate sacrifice for the greater good of the world and this is a movie. Sniffles could be heard throughout the theater as, presumably, we said goodbye to a beloved character. There was a funeral scene, and then some more time travel. Everyone was very solemn, and Samuel L. Jackson was there. Fin.

The Verdict

You’re probably thinking I hated this movie, or was bored to death by it. Surprisingly, I actually had a pretty enjoyable experience. For a three hour movie where I really didn’t understand much of what was happening, I felt engaged with it for almost the entire duration. I was shocked by how quickly those three hours passed. I will admit that it’s a bit of a struggle to follow a movie like this when it’s after midnight and there’s no recap of the previous eleven movies beforehand. So I guess the question is, would I recommend seeing Avengers: Endgame without seeing the other Avengers movies first? No, absolutely not. But if you find yourself in the same situation as me, please do not use my summary of the film as a way to prepare.

movie review

Netflix’s “The Devil All The Time” is the perfect spooky movie to watch at home