Reviews

Wanted to give this 6/10, but couldn't. So much of this felt inconsequential in that I know all these characters are in the other movies, so I have no reason to be worried if they'll live or die. A lot of this felt like it was throwing everything at me in the hopes that I'll be entertained. There were so many explosions and spectacle, way too much to be beneficial to the narrative. So much of the character conflict relies on callback to The Avengers movie as well- it's called Iron Man 3, not Avengers 2. Additionally, Downey Jr. gave a pretty shallow performance of an anxiety attack, it felt really out of touch. I will say that the end fight was impressive, but it was still difficult to suspend my disbelief entirely - Tony's falling and getting beat up so much but he doesn't seem very bruised at all. The post credits scene was nonsensical- you're telling me that a super rich genius wouldn't hire an actual certified therapist to talk through his anxiety? Really? Overall, a very by-the-numbers superhero movie that didn't seem to have much of a purpose other than concluding the Iron Man arc, which didn't need to be 130 minutes long.

Nothing in this works. At all. This is the exact reason I gave up on modern horror films. The dialogue is laughably bad and makes for completely flat and terribly unlikeable characters. Theres also some of the poorest attempts at comic relief in a film that I have ever seen. I audibly groaned at nearly all of them. It doesn't help that the acting and delivery of the dialogue couldn't have been worse. I had to keep from screaming at the characters. The music was placed at the absolute worst times - not only the theme music, but the jump scares. When trying to follow up a classic like the original Halloween and retconning everything else, you have to bring at least SOMETHING to the table. In the original, the jump scares were minimal and were purposeful. Not only that, but so much of this movie is rehashing scenes from the original in the most blatant and ham-fisted way possible. Some scenes were identical for no reason other than to remind the audience of the original. It lacks any kind of energy or tension, mainly due to the predicable and overuse of jump scares, as mentioned. Even the 2007 remake had SOME energy, and at least Resurrection was a little laughable. This had absolutely nothing - no likable characters, no innovative directing, no memorable imagery, no interesting locations - nothing. How about the ending of this? Almost identical to that of Halloween II, but it's supposed to be ok since this retconned it and is supposed to replace it, right? No, it still exists, and we have to acknowledge that.

I hate Jason Blum so much. So much of the runtime has nothing to do with Myers, it's clear that this film was a product made to make money and cash in on the franchise, and clearly the goal was accomplished, seeing as how it's currently made $174.5 million at the box office on a budget of $10-15 mil. I rarely ever give anything such a low rating, but I really tried to grasp anything at all to appreciate here, and there was no possible way it could have been any worse. I pride myself on being hypercritical to every aspect of a given film and not just giving 1 star because I got bored or didn't absolutely love it, like I see some people do. This one was actually that bad. Skip this, the 1981 sequel is far superior and miles more satisfying.

No, not a good way to end the series at all. Follows the sci-fi trope of 'figuring out how to go back in time so that bad thing doesn't happen', just like we JUST SAW in the season 4 finale of Atlantis. Not to mention the countless other times this SAME SHOW used this trope, like the series finale 'Unending' or '2010' in season 4. I just wish more would happen to wrap up a show that lasted an entire 10 years on air. Even Ark of Truth was better than this, and even that felt rushed and wildly unnecessary. Other than that, the audio design in this was atrocious. It felt like the people who made this haven't been making a tv show for 10 years. The scene in the hangar bay was difficult to hear, and so was the extremely muffled dialogue over radios in the air-fight near the end. Also who did President Hayes' hairstyling? What was that supposed to be? The ending was another point of contention. It follows the final boss video game trope of 'protect person (Sam in this case) from waves of enemies', which was so unimaginative, not to mention the super cheesy slo-mo of everyone dying at the end. As a whole, this didn't need to exist, as nothing really seemed to actually happen in it-everything that did was just reset by the end.

I've been hating this season so far so I had every reason to be skeptical about this episode. Happy to say I surprisingly enjoyed it.

The pacing was really nice-the episode covers a lot of ground in 55 minutes which is a nice breath of fresh air. Porter isn't nearly as annoying as he's been in every other episode too. It really ties up loose ends from the season 1 cliffhanger that was never acknowledged since they didn't know it would be anthology at that point. The scene with Moira and her mom really sold it to me. This is what AHS really is at its core: the horror of being human. The acting was perfect and such a satisfying way to close an arc from 7 years ago.

Tate's wig did throw me off a bit. I know Evan's playing another character this season, but it just looked so awkward and stiff.

I do have to admit that it does still feel like fan service and callback just for the sake of it. The only difference here is that the story actually goes somewhere, whereas the previous episodes seem to just say 'oh look you like these characters, right? that means you like the episode!' without actually going anywhere. Also, the continuity this season is a bit confusing. This is like the third episode of a flashback sequence that I keep forgetting about. A bit much, maybe? The exposition on who the ghosts were in the Murder House was a bit forced, but it's fine. The camerawork is nice to a point. The canted angles and constantly moving camera did become intrusive and unneeded, and all the closeups became somewhat suffocating.

The retcon of Tate not being Michael's father did bother me, though. Come to think of it, it feels like they just made that character Michael to give a reason to go back to the Murder House, which I'm conflicted about.

In the end, even with these criticisms, I did still really enjoy it, which is a first for the season.

It feels like season changes course every few minutes, is it supposed to be a sequel to Coven? Can we go back to when this show was an anthology? Still no explanation as to how Myrtle is alive, screw continuity I guess? Speaking of, her random comments feel so out of place unneeded-it was kind of sad. Disappointed Venable had to die since she was the thing I liked the most about this season. Paulson in a powerful serious role was great and I really wanted to know more of her backstory. Kathy Bates' character is a joke. Horrible edgy dialogue reminiscent of something I would've written in high school. Still not entirely sure why her character's here in the first place. The worst part of this one was the male coven. I just can't take the flaming characters seriously, especially Billy Porter, who was the absolute worst actor in the entire series thus far, and Cheyenne Jackson was so much better in hotel.

The one thing I liked again was the really solid ending, it just proves how great the series can be, I just wish the entire episode had that consistent quality.

Just more of the same. Nothing happening until the last 5 minutes, and, until then, we get extremely cartoonish characters (as I've said many times before) especially Coco, who is probably the most annoying character in television history. The entrance of the witches from season three also felt very misplaced and shoehorned as fan service (which it really is, let's not kid ourselves) but i will give it that the music was nice. Additionally, on this same note, just because the characters from one of previous seasons are back doesn't make the entire episode good, as I've seen many other reviewers seem to assert. Also, the 'surprise bitch' line makes no sense. Mallory has never seen Madison before (or as far as we know) so why would she have expected to have seen the last of her? Because Murphy needed to shoehorn in that famous catch phrase for fan service. Come to think of it, aren't Madison and Myrtle both dead?

First, what I liked: there's a lot of style here and it really shines through with the cinematography and lovely brown-black color palette, both supported by the costuming. There's a lot of atmosphere in the sets as well which is reminiscent of Asylum. Paulson was really good in this, given that it's a serious role like in Murder house, not las season with her running around screaming half the time. This is very different for AHS and I'm curious to see where it goes. And now what I wasn't too happy about- Absolutely hates the first 7 minutes or so. Horrible dialogue and absolutely cartoonish characters. It definitely got better as the episode went on, but my question is why is so much of this show, including last season, played so much for comedy? It is called American HORROR story, right? And it seems to go far beyond just comic relief. My other problem was the really awkward and unsubtle political commentary. The reason for all these people being held is because of an Ancestry website? The one girl got arrested for protesting on campus? and the entire house was created because people thought they where equal because of social media? It all just felt so forced and would've been a much smoother episode without all this explanation.

Last note- I cringed so hard at the 'this stew is Stu' line. Was that needed?

This angers me. I just have a lot of questions that were never answered in the show and, frankly, the ending doesn't make much sense. Why would Camille eat the dinner in the first place? Wouldn't she know it was probably poisoned? Even then, why did she voluntarily swallow Adora's medicine? So many opportunities to spit it out. And when the police came to the house, the shot just stays on Amy Adams laying on the floor - I want to see what's going on! Also why was Ashley acting so strange throughout the entire series? Why was there blood on her carpet a few episodes ago? So much that doesn't make sense in this.

As a whole, the entire show, and especially the ending, was incredibly underwhelming and disappointing.

This had such an intriguing premise, what happened? Nearly the entire episode felt like an excuse for a clip show. The video messages recording was so dumb and terribly unfunny. Not to mention that the quality of the footage was way too good to be homemade, which makes me wonder-why didn't the director just record the messages from the camera that the characters were shown to be using, instead of having the editor put those really gross artificial lines in post? If they would've filmed this in a home video camera (like the one the characters were seen actually using) it would've looked so much more authentic. The other half of the episode was of Teyla and Sheppard waiting around in a ship doing absolutely nothing until Sheppard finally decided to see what was going on, and still the viewer is forced to stay in the ship as Teyla waits around doing nothing. Why the hell didn't we follow Sheppard when he left the ship? Not to mention, the cloaking makes absolutely no sense. Usually in sci-fi, the outer shell of the ship is what's invisible, so why didn't the Wraith see inside when the door was open? To top it all off, Carter's cameo in this was the most underwhelming thing in the entire show so far. I can only hope that it gets better next season.

First off, there was an 8 year old girl in the theatre with her family when I went to see this, what are you people thinking?

Anyways, The film had one really good scary moment, but by the end I didn't totally understand the narrative and had to keep looking up explanations to understand exactly what happened. Still, my question is- why did the cult need to put Charlie's spirit inside of Peter? Wasn't the whole point to get Paimon a male host? Why keep Charlie? Also, why is it that none of the characters call the police during any of this? The one scene that did really get to me was the decapitation scene - how the characters reacted to it and how the director chose to reveal it. I don't remember another time I've felt that much adrenaline rush through me when watching a movie. However, the rest of the film felt pretty slow and eventless, and at some points boring. The first scene at the grief recovery group was pretty bad. Collette's character gives a total exposition dump of 'here's everything you need to know about my character to watch the rest of the film'. As well acted as it was, the movie felt like it came to a grinding halt for this, which was a major flaw in the writing. I really couldn't take Alex Wolff seriously in this. He just seemed like just another douchey frat bro. A shame that most of the film hinges on his character and performance. He was fine in Patriots Day, but that might've been because I didn't realize it was him. However, there were a few scenes where the actors did create good tension when they didn't have any dialogue, mainly the dinner scenes.

Also, at the very end when the Mom was floating up the ladder to the treehouse, I couldn't help but laugh, it was so unintentionally funny to me.

Pretty disappointing considering the hype. There's not really all that much conflict here. The film presents small episodic events that never really seem to amount to much consequence. It's nice that Krasinski tries to build tension with sound, but just watching these characters trying to survive doesn't go far enough to make an entertaining movie. It was just so disappointing how little they ended up doing with the concept, and resorted to an obnoxious number of jump-scares instead.

The story as a whole lacks a significant amount of exposition as well. We are never given any reason to care about these characters, and the film just automatically assumes that we do. I myself couldn't considering how many stupid decisions they make throughout the runtime. Same thing with the monsters. We are never given a backstory to them and my questions remain: what are they? where did they come from? why are they here?

The characters don't talk all that much, but when they do, the dialogue is any is pretty simplistic and boring. The child acting is questionable, while the two lead adults is just passable. As mentioned, I couldn't help not caring about these characters. When all of this is going on, why would they decide to have a baby? Isn't that such an obnoxious and unnecessary risk? Also, when Evelyn's labor takes less than five minutes. If you know anything about childbirth, you would know that labor lasts for a number of hours. Really?

When Lee is sacrificing himself to save his kids, why would he drop his weapon? couldn't he have tried to fight the monster? Speaking of, why have the characters never even tried to fight back? there's only three of the monsters, why wouldn't they have tried shooting them earlier?

As a whole, I felt like this was the middle and end of a movie that was missing beginning since there is so much exposition and information missing.

Extremely similar to the X-Files first season cliffhanger where 'major government program that is also the title of the show is shut down'. As for recap/clip show, it wasn't as bad or unimaginative as something like TNG's Shades of Grey, but I did find myself skipping forward through the episode a lot, since I've seen every episode up to here. However, it did offer some self-aware and interesting arguments where the writers question themselves and reflect on the season's coincidences and plot conveniences, so if anything, that was slightly redeemable.

What an incredibly sloppy wrap up. It was just so convoluted with all these time jumps in the first half of the episode with too much info coming at you fast. Has way too many action and sequences again, much like the last episode CC directed. I think this could've worked a lot better if it was split into two episodes or was double length like the season 9 finale in 2002. This entire episode is just a cat-and-mouse chase with literally no payoff at all.

So much in this seems pointless. Like why was Erika Price or Mr. Y in the series at all? Why did Jackson feel the need to prove that he had powers to that truck driver? Completely unnecessary. On the same note, his powers were so incredibly cheesy. Watching people randomly explode was just over the top and laughable.

The dialogue was also so cringe worthy and clunky. Drink every time Scully says "I know how it ends". I actually ironed when she tells muller that he's in "grave danger". Like seriously? Also, Scully has been built up over the years as this incredibly intelligent and respectable character, which was proven in the original run a countless number of times. Given this, why was she written so dumb in this? Like at the end on the docks, why didn't she know she was talking to William disguised as Mulder? She knows he can do that, so why didn't she realize it was him? There was no actual wrap up between them, she just decides that William was never meant to be and the episode ends.

Everything in this just didn't feel like it was really happening because everything happened so fast and abruptly. Everyone is just killed off suddenly and the characters seem to just accept it an move on instantly. Come to think of it, by the end of the episode, Mulder and Scully don't even know that Skinner or Reyes are dead. Speaking of, did they even actually die? what? why? its just so sudden I couldn't process everything happening. All these characters were so meticulously created 30 some years ago, just to have such meaningless deaths? I'm not buying it.

Glaring similarities to Six Feet Under in this. Honestly Alan Ball has no new ideas anymore.

Similarities (SFU parallels in parentheses): Family based drama Drugged sassy teen girl (Claire) Token gay characters (David and Keith) Mom used to be a therapist, kid goes down same path (Brenda and her parents) Parent wrote a book (Brenda's parents) A character just hooked up with someone who meets their family (Nate and Brenda) Mom doesn't know how to treat her gay son (Ruth when she asks if David will have any 'special friends' over for dinner) Big family event centered around the dad (Nathaniel's funeral)

The speech that the dad character gives in this also just feels super preachy and like Ball is just straight up talking to the audience. Felt like a pretty lazy way to write. I'll be honest, *some* of the characters are interesting and it has some good visuals, but seriously overruled by how unoriginal the writing is.

God this season is just another one where things just kind of happen and they have no consequence or effect on anything else. It feels so pointless. Most notably, the Kassidi and Carl arc is nothing other than repetitive. If this is going somewhere, get to it already. The writers have proven that she's clearly deranged or whatever, so what's the point? Why was her character introduced? Not to mention the scene in the beginning when Fiona calls Carl and Kassidi dumb for getting married on impulse at such a young age: um excuse me didn't you do THE EXACT SAME THING WITH GUS A FEW SEASONS AGO? YOU ARE NOT BETTER THAN THEM STOP. Also Sierra NEEDS to be written out of the show. Nothing about her character is remotely interesting and Lip has no reason to be so drawn to her. She's treated him terribly, and, if he's as smart as the writers say he is (getting great grades in High school and being accepted into MIT), he would move on and find someone else. The whole thing with Ian being a savior to the gays has actually gone off the rails. Again, where are they going with this? It feels so much like filler, and the end of the episode was so incredibly cheesy with 'cool guys don't look at explosions' cliche, even if it was really well shot. I did find the Fiona and Svetlana storylines genuinely interesting. Goreshter in particular is a great actress and carries the story well. Along with this, Debbie's toe debacle was incredibly gut wrenching and really well done.