What I liked:

In all honesty, the thing I liked best about this movie was that it had the new Old Spice commercial showing in advance of it appearing in TV. It literally had everyone in the theatre laughing their asses off, and considering everyone was in there to see a horror movie it was literally a seating arrangement of guy next to girl in every seat. I could have walked out at that point and it would have been the $11 well spent.

Freddy Krueger is virtually the only bad guy in mainstream horror films that either A) isn’t a vampire/werewolf/tentacle monster, or B) wasn’t once-upon-a-time a good guy. He’s the only bad guy you enjoy seeing die.

What I disliked:

Aside from a few elements that were okay, a bit more brevity in the story than the original, I disliked it all. The only way I could have had more corn and cheese in this movie would have been if I’d picked up a bag of white cheddar popcorn. The unadulterated campness was an injustice to all things good and camp. Really, I wholly disagree with the rating agencies for film, but I would fully back an organization to limit the quantity of campness that can be placed in a movie – because, “won’t somebody please think of the children!”

Overall: 5/10

I likely wouldn’t have done anything more productive with my time, but I can list a lot of things that would have been more worth my time. However, I did enjoy laughing my ass off at various parts of the movie that were clearly intended to be scary, and by the sounds of it the majority of the men in the audience we’re right there with me.

Judgement: Free on TV, anything more is an insult to the cash in your wallet.

©2012 Nik Gregory. All Rights Reserved.

We also had a fun visit from my wife’s cousin, and spent this weekend attending another one of her cousins weddings, all amongst a regular schedule that doesn’t usually include time for review writing. We also saw the Nightmare on Elm Street during this time, which will be receiving a dutifully short review (for better or worse), and I will be keeping this review as succinct as possible. Anyway, onto the movie.

What I liked:

Well pretty much everything. Matthew Vaughn is one of my favorite directors and despite a very short directing list, I’m anticipating his future works (another by the writer of the Kick Ass and Wanted comics). He has a great ability to make scripts Hollywood-acceptable, without making the content Hollywood. An eleven-year-old girl kills, maims and dismembers people and people showed greater concern over her characters potty mouth.

I’m sorry, I’d have more problem with my children being mass murderers before hitting pubity than hearing them use ‘cunt’ in an insult. Perhaps my moral values are off from society, but I generally rate vulgarity below violence on the ranking of character vices to avoid. I would have thought the religious right would be with me on this, Blasphemy is not as big a sin as Murder, and vulgarity isn’t explicitly a sin in and of itself. It’s also worth noting the 3rd commandment isn’t a proclivity against swearing as in vulgarity, but against oath swearing under the name of the lord.

The action scenes were awesome, especially Hit Girl’s main scene. The choreography was great, and the first-person view through her night-vision goggles is possibly the only fan-play to FPS gamers that was executed in a good way, usually any first-person perspective in a film is horrific even when it’s not done artistically as fan-play.

What I disliked:

Was honestly virtually nothing. I would have preferred Mark Millar’s ending to the story, however that ending isn’t well suited to film. I can understand why Vaughn would use a more commercial ending, after all he does need to earn a living and he’s selling to an American market, not the British market where unfortunate endings are more accepted.

My other problem with it was that the flow of the film died a little bit with the sequel setup, which I know was in the original material, but could have really been cut out for the film. Although, story wise, I can understand the inclusion because it’s an illustrating point that’s often discussed in comic works that the existence of Super Heroes/Villains will cause need for the rise of the other.

Overall: 9/10

This is one of the greatest movies I’ll see all year, and I don’t even need to know what else is coming out to claim this. However, it certainly isn’t going to be the greatest movie I’ll see this decade, although I don’t preclude Vaughn taking that title.

Judgement: Buy it, rent it, watch it in theaters, whichever you choose, it’ll be worth it.

©2012 Nik Gregory. All Rights Reserved.

I was pleasantly surprised that I actually enjoyed this movie, here’s why:

Horror movies are inevitably funny, usually due to their low budgets and the fact they usually take themselves overly serious certainly doesn’t help. Daybreakers feels like it was doomed to this track, however the Spierig brothers appear to have realized somewhere along the way that their script for a serious vampire-sci-fi movie (yes, a very bad combination to begin with) was hilarious. All credit must go to Willem Dafoe who made this movie entertaining. He arrives roughly halfway through, and the seriousness slowly converts to humour, just in time for most of the actual action.

Surprisingly the duality in the picture works well. The seriousness in the beginning aids in making the scenes jumpy and tense, while the relaxed-humour towards the end makes the inevitable gore festival of an 18A a laugh-fest.

Here are the reasons why I didn’t like the movie:

Clichés abounded throughout, and to name a few: No reflections in mirrors, seriously? Sadly yes. Vampires set on fire in sunlight, but I’ll forgive this one as it is actually used for an interesting and unique plot point. Vampires explode when they die, but apparently not when they burn to death.

The ending isn’t a cliff hanger, it isn’t even an ending. Nothing is resolved, there’s no feel of accomplishment for watching through an epic-adventure. I suppose this is to leave it open for a sequel, however it could have been done much better. It was a very ungratifying end.

Overall: 7/10

For fans of Willem Dafoe or comedy-horrors, this movie is worth watching. For the rest of the general public, it certainly isn’t worth the ticket price in the theatres. If you like seeing things on the big screen, perhaps look to see if your local theatre has a slow-day deal, like popcorn and drink included in the ticket price as at least you’re getting a little more for your money.

This is definitely a movie to rent, it’s an enjoyable watch and doesn’t feel like you wasted an unrecoverable 98 minutes. The ending is a bit weak, but the rest of the movie is definitely strong, and doesn’t suffer from a killer slow-period in the middle, in fact the movie as a whole is very well paced.

Judgement: Rent it

©2012 Nik Gregory. All Rights Reserved.