[EXPRESSO] The Mummy Demastered PSN | Prodigium Posse

Since i got this on the Halloween PSN sale, why not?

And i mean it, sure, it’s based on 2017’s “The Mummy”, that turd of a movie that was supposed to be the “real” launchpad for Universal’s MCU horror equivalent, the Dark Universe.. after trying and failing with Dracula Untold just 3 years earlier.

But it’s also developed by Wayforward, who notoriously built their reputation by actually doing good tie-in licensed videogames (and kickstarting their original series, Shantae), so they could manage to actually do some good with the abysmal source material. And they did.

It’s nothing original, but it’s also a good little Metroidvania title, who puts you in control of a soldier working for Prodigium, the secret company dedicated to defend the world from monsters, tasked by the face of Russel Crowe (who plays Doctor Jekyll in the movie) with defeating the freshly resurrected mummy princess Ahmamet. The plot is basically a side-sequel, as its events run alongside the ones in the movie, so no digitized retro-Tom Cruise to see here. Still, the plot is better narrated here than in the movie, and it’s told almost completely via exposition dumps.

The 16-bit styled retro graphics and the synthwave music are quite good, and while the game doesn’t try to change much of the typical Metroidvania trappings, it’s far from uninspired. Actually, it’s well done, and it also has a touch of “Zombi U”, as when you die you restart at the last save point, taking control of another Prodigium soldier and having to retrieve your equipment and upgrades from the other soldier, now zombified, but still weapon savvy.

It’s also fairly well paced, a bit on the short side, but, enjoyable all the way, and fairly well balanced, not easy but also not impossible. Or too challenging overall.

Cinema Purgatorio

I wanted to see a couple of horror movies in theathers this Halloween (and also do EXPRESSO reviews of them), but from yesterday onwards Italy’s basically on a temporary 1-month lockdown of sorts due to COVID-19. Yes. Again.

So that idea goes in the bin, because you bet cinemas are closed, and i don’t know how many will even be able to re-open for the dicember-Christmas season. Then again, Christmas wasn’t gonna be that jolly since we’re in the midst of both a global pandemic AND an economic recession.

I’ll probably see what’s up on Netflix and see if i care to bother. We’ll see.

Stay safe. Whatever that implies for you.

Zoombies 2 (2019) [REVIEW] | Aardvark Undead Attack

Apparently the first one did alright from a financial standpoint, so 3 years later, we got a sequel, also directed by Glenn Miller.

And by sequel The Asylum means adding a number to the title, because despite the first one doing sequel bait at the very last second, this doesn’t follow up on the adventures of Kifo, undead silverback gorilla with a broken heart and rotting flesh, no. Guess trying to give the zombie gorilla a Frankenstein’s monster style “vengeance arc” was too much effort, so they didn’t do that.

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Zoombies (2016) [REVIEW] | A Friend That’s Good With The Dead

Even with a title like this, you wouldn’t expect the movie to basically shit itself in the first scene, which happens to be a fictitious commercial for an endangered species zoo called “Eden Wildlife Zoo”, an advertisment that looks it was made in Windows Movie Maker… in the early 2000’s, by people that barely knew what a computer was.

I can’t stress how childish and amauterish this is, even for The Asylum, who in this case must have allocated 100 bucks for editing and production, combined, given how much animal footage seems just ripped from free libraries or used what one of the employee recorded when it took a family trip to the zoo. It looks like they’re playing a joke, but they’re not, and in the first 2 minutes they already shit down their own pants. But fear not, the CG monkeys you seen in the first 5 minutes are somehow worse, i – almost – can’t believe it. I’ve seen snippets from Primal Park, so i can’t really call it “the worst”, but still, it’s really shitty regardless, almost impressively so.

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[EXPRESSO] The Personal History Of David Copperfield (2019) | Paupers, Please

Based on the novel by Charles Dickens… one i will admit to be not THAT familiar with.

So don’t expect me to compare it to the many other film or TV adaptations of the story, i simply can’t and won’t. But i will describe the basic plot, just in case.

Starting at the end, the movie has David Copperfield chronicle his life, from his brief moment of idyllic joy visiting the family of his nanny at their bout house in Yarmouth, to her moment remarring to a a cruel man who exiles him to London, making him work at his factory, and meeting many colorful characters that live in similar if not more crushing and dismaying poverty. After hearing of his mother’s death and funeral, he escapes from the dismal life at the factory to his eccentric aunt, and her even more eccentric lodger, flip-flopping between the wealth of the “gentlemen’s lifestyle” and his past miseries coming back to him.

So, i saw “The Personal Life Of David Copperfield” yesterday… and it was good. Perfect casting, amazing performances, the characters are charming and memorable, it gets a good balance between the whimsical positive attititude and the abject squallor of the poor in victorian London (as you would expect), and the themes of class conflict still work, even with the whimsical tone and the over the top characters.

Quite funny, but at times its so enamored with his “british comedy wit” that comes off as a bit grating. Still charming, absolutely, but a bit grating and self-indulgent, even if it’s deliberately done. That said, it’s a good one from director Armando Iannucci, i’d say. Not great, but good.

I really don’t know how it stacks up against the other film adaptations of the tale, but in its own, i’d recommend it.

Bunnyman AKA The Bunnyman Massacre (2011) [REVIEW] | The Ice Scream Bunny

Sometimes you get surprised by these low budget slasher flicks you can find on amazon for pennies. Sometimes.

But most of the times you get shit like The Bunnyman Massacre, which works quite hard to be really boring, given nobody expects too much out of a movie called “The Bunnyman Massacre” (technically just “The Bunnyman”, but the UK DVD title is better, and more appropriate, even if would become accidentally confusing), just some shlock for a movie night with friends, but at least entertaining shlock.

In case the title (or the title with a person in bunny costume holding a chainsaw on the cover) isn’t indicative enough, this is yet another Texas Chainsaw Massacre rip-off, one so damn cheap it skimps on showing gore. I could end the review here, but this one deserves a full “spanking”, and not just because i – somehow – expect to see Dead Alive/Braindead/Splatters levels and quality of gore.

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[EXPRESSO] Creators – The Past (2019) | Star Odissey Barbarian Italian Gods Of Space Magick

You might be wondering what the hell is this.

I did too, until i remembered the name from 2019’s edition of the Lucca Comic & Games convention in Italy, but i never “investigated” and i….completely forgot about it.

Then again, they didn’t market it AT ALL, despite being an italian production with William Shatner and Gérard Depardieu, alongside a cast mostly made by americans, italian actors at their first role and italian musician Angelo Minoli.

The year is 2012, and an extraordinary planetary aligment is about to happen. The eight members of the Galactic Council (each governing their own planet as a “Creator”) meet to discuss of the coming events, but following an incident they lose an essential artifact, and task a human girl to retrieve it before the planets disalign.

This is the basic gist… the movie itself it’s INSANE, it really lives up to the “colossal” monicker, as they basically threw together 3-4 movies. And – as you would expect – it gets confusing, as the sub-plots splinter into smaller sub-plots, each of the Creators has their hidden agenda, and the movie just keep throwing things at the viewer, like Jesus Christ, aliens abductions, conspiracies, sword and sorcery bits with scorpion-men, the very specifically italian “battle of the oranges”, etc.

And YES, all these things are connected together. The drawback is that with that many subplots and a runtime under 2 hours, some are abruptly resolved in seconds. Often because the movie just makes up new bullshit rules to do so. It’s anything but boring or stale, it’s visually intriguing, there is definitely dedication and ambition here, alongside a lot of money for an italian production of this type.

It tries to set-up sequels.

… I really wouldn’t mind, at all, but i “feel” they ain’t gonna happen.

[EXPRESSO] Waiting For The Barbarians (2019) | Attila, Scourge Of Odd

Based on the novel of the same by J. M. Coetzee, Waiting For The Barbarians is one of the recent italian productions made with the international market in mind, with Robert Pattinson….but also Johnny Depp, who is still getting work, despite everything.

Let’s leave it at that for the sake of the review, ok?

Taking place in an indefined frontier outpost near the border of an unknown empire (even though they look like british frontier soldiers), the movie follows the story of the Magister, who is close to retirement as Colonel Joll arrives, tasked with security and gathering intel on the “barbarians”. But as he outrights searches these people to capture and torture them in public,tries to stir a full-out war, the Magister has second thoughts, gets accused of treason, etc.

And it’s a frustrating one to review, because there is ambition, the cast is good (mostly), but the movie isn’t as “deep” as it thinks, it’s a story about “the horrors of war and the monstrous need for an enemy to exist”, that is obvious right away, for every character in the movie… beside the protagonist, the Magistrate, who seems to be surprised by anything that happens, and makes you wonder how he can possibly be so absurdly naive.

Way more than he’s intended to be, to the point of it being laughably cartoonish and dissonant with the otherwise more realistic scenes of torture, corruption and.. well anything. And the movie is also slowly paced, like its main protagonist it spends ages yet again re-iterating on the beyond obvious messages and themes. Doesn’t help that Depp also plays a cartoonish “nazi frontier general” villain, even more caricatural than usual.

Shame, because it has some inspired moments, it really does, but in the end it’s kind of a mess.

[EXPRESSO] Jack In The Box (2019) | Spring Daemon

I’ll be honest, i walked into this one expecting a turd of sorts.

I mean, it’s not like this promises more than it does, it’s called Jack In The Box and it’s about an evil Jack In The Box. As in, the clown in the box is evil, because it can’t be a pierrot or an evil possessed figure from Commedia Dell’Arte, something that isn’t your usual choice of evil clown. Then again, this specific angle isn’t overdone… i think.

The plot deals with a new museum curator, Casey, arriving in the little english town of Hawthorne, and while wading through the “lost and found” inventory, he notices an odd box with some mystical engraving, appearing to be a creepy jack-in-the-box toy from the victorian era. But as more mysterious murders keep occurings, the more Casey learns of old tales related to the “jack-in-the-box” being coinceived to contain and unleash demons, and of a previous murder related to the box…

Directed and written by Lawrence Fowler, who previously directed some shorts and something called Curse Of The Witch’s Doll, which looks as generic as this one. And there is a sequel to this one already in pre-production, set to release in 2021.

And….i’m not against a sequel, there is something here (even if the “jack-in-the-box” demon lore is a bit silly, just a tad), and for a relatively low budget independent british horror film, this is definitely more than presentable for theathers, the monster design, make-up and effects are quite convincing, and the museum setting is a nice touch. Acting is decent, to boot.

Shame the direction and script are not as strong, kinda generic, pedestrian at times, with some twists seen coming a mile away, flashbacks to things that happened 10 minutes before, and an ending that aggressively sets up a sequel.

[EXPRESSO] #Alive (2020) | SNS Zombies

No cinema for me this week, so guess i’ll dust off Netflix, see and review this new korean zombie movie, which comes with the hashtag already built in the title. The plot sees a streamer in Seoul waking up and logging on to do some online gaming (he’s shown playing PUBG), only to hear people chatting of something weird being broadcast on tv, and soon enough even in the very streets below him, as a zombie virus of sorts spreads.

He’s forced to barricade himself home, trying to use his tech savviness to understand what is exactly going on outside, all made harder by scarce rations and social medias (or the reception for phones) not working most the time.

It’s better than i expected, and being set in “the now” you get to see fun stuff like zombie (of the running and “contorsionist” variety) getting attacked by drones’s eliblades, and there are some cool action scenes, production values are fairly decent-good, same for the special effects. Problem is, there isn’t too much to the plot, there’s enough, but nothing special, and after a fairly fast start, the movie suffers from pacing problems.

I understand it would be more realistic to see characters barricade themselves into their apartments, and while this is to feed into the “surviving days and days into a zombie apocalypse”, this kinda backfires, as the plot doesn’t really moves forward or backwards, and it’s not until the third act where it picks up again. Thankfully the characters are likeable, given how much time you spend watching them try to communicate or concoct a plan, but they’re not good enough to gloss over the fairly typical twists and turns of the narrative. Not even with some cool “hip” music.

Decent, worth a watch, for sure, but nothing special.