The Croods

First world problems

Meet the Croods, an irresistibly likable family of Neanderthals struggling to survive each other and the prehistoric world they live in. They’re awesome, right? You can tell from just the previews. Now meet Dreamworks, the hit-or-miss animation studio that took the Croods’ sparking potential to be an animated triumph, and tossed it in a bubbling volcano. Not quite as awesome.

Dreamworks usually cooks up fantastic original films (Shrek, Madagascar, and How to Train Your Dragon, to name three) and gives them terrible cash-guzzling sequels. This will (hopefully) not be the case with The Croods, a film already mediocre enough that it doesn’t need a sequel to ruin it.

Oz the Great and Powerful

Potholes in the yellow brick road

Oz the Great and Powerful has inconsistent flashes of greatness, but rarely gets far away from its home in Decency, Kansas. Visually, the film could beat the likes of Avatar and Life of Pi in a beauty pageant. But special effects alone can’t entertain an audience for a 130-minute runtime, and with little else to distract from poor acting and awkward filler, this film isn’t the magical journey the kingdom has been waiting for.

The prequel is good as long as it stays on the yellow brick road the classic Wizard of Oz paved for it. The script (written by David Lindsay-Abaire and Mitchell Kapner) is packed with munchkin-sized references and foreshadowing to the original tale. When the script thinks for itself, however, story elements, characters, and dialogue is generic and unoriginal.

The Last Exorcism Part II

Hopefully the last

The Last Exorcism was a great horror movie. It hopped aboard the found footage trend The Blair Witch Project institutionalized, and its low-key horror was a creepy crescendo into a haunting favorite. If only it had fulfilled its title.

Because of its success, we now have to deal with The Last Exorcism Part II, a movie whose title mocks itself. Seriously, I tried making a joke out of the title, but it just came out as the actual title. Director Ed Gass-Donnelly didn’t exactly break his back trying to live up to the original on any fathomable level. The supposed sequel wasn’t even filmed in the same format as the first one. The found footage style that made the first one special? Let’s get rid of that crap and reference it as an irrelevant plot point halfway through. Thank Abalam Ashley Bell was there to keep it somewhat watchable.

Dark Skies

Dark, indeed

Welcome to Crappy Horror Movie Week. Because I randomly didn’t post anything for half a month, this week I’ll be reviewing Dark Skies, the first Last Exorcism and the last Last Exorcism. Maybe. I haven’t seen the first Last one yet, so it depends on if I can, you know, muster the courage. Just kidding, it depends on if I can handle subjecting myself to its crappiness.

Today is Dark Skies, AKA that overlooked horror movie you never heard of, AKA a movie released in February. When I went to see it I was under the impression I was attending opening night but the movie was actually in theaters for like two weeks already, but I can assure you it actually is a thing.