[EXPRESSO] War Of The Worlds (2025) | Redditors VS Aliens

Yep, we doing this one.

The plot sees a Homeland Security officer, Will Radford (Ice Cube) at work being “benign Big Brother” for the government (while also monitoring his family, to their dismay), when a meteorite shower reveals to be a worlwide attack by alien machines, forcing Will to do what he can to save his family and help fight back the invaders however he can.

On paper it’s not necessarily a bad idea to make a modern War of The World remake focusing on the aliens taking over data infrastructures in the surveillance state internet reliant reality where everyone’s on their phones, playing up the “government conspiracy” angle… and proposing it as a screenlife thing, like a sci-fi Unfriended.

Yeah, that already sets off more bells than a Blue Oyster Cult comment section, and makes it abundantly obvious this was shot during the 2020 Covid pandemic, with Amazon sitting on it for 5 years before they remembered, “bothered” to do post-production and made it available on their streaming service.

They knew they were sitting on a turd, one so riddled with brazens self-promotion it’s comical (the climax of the movie involves an Amazon drone helping save the day), not that the movie actually decides if it’s against or pro “Big Tech”, and while Ice Cube’s acting is bad, it’s not like he has much to work with, the entire thing is so fuckin stupid and becomes even stupider, and a cinically rushed shitshow with plenty of IA generated news segments (and stock footage that looks bad enough to be IA generated slop too), on top of very shitty special effects.

And yet it’s so fiercely bad it does actually become one of the rare modern “so bad it’s good” movies, it has that kind of entertaiment quality to it.

Monster Armageddon/2025 Armageddon (2022) [REVIEW] | #giantmonstermarch

I’ve lamented the downright lethargic, nearly comatose state and distinct disinterest, so nested and in a rot The Asylum is with their output in this last period, i’ve done that before.

It’s clear whatever “magic” they summoned with Sharknado didn’t last long, and now just rest on their laurels, so to speak, as even the usual aficionados of trash got disinterested in the same way the company itself seems to be with whatever they cram out, they keep doing their thing but just because it’s what they have always done, and will keep doing until there’s not any money left off mockbustering.

I remember from a class in genre cinema i once took that – broadly speaking – a genre has reached a stage of severe stagnation when it starts becoming metatextual, to speak of itself more than anything else, as it can obstensibly find nothing else to iterate on, so it “turns on itself”.

And while it no longer hold completely true, as we’re now in a post-meta phase, if you will, there’s still a valid argument in there, because films like Monster Armageddon (released as 2025 Armageddon in trying to fool more people) validate the implied drying up of the “creative well”, and are a testament to this decade of post-irony, meta overdosing incestinal multiverse crossovers, of finding out there’s no bottom of the barrel, no real lowest of the low that can’t be “improved” upon.

I remember buying the DVD for this one for 5 bucks, sight unseen, on Amazon back in 2023, i knew it was an Asylum joint, and the cover art was nice, featuring a lots of monsters and creatures.

As with Monster Island (their mockbuster response to 2019’s Godzilla II: King Of The Monsters), the cover art is way better than the movie itself, but this time around it isn’t a complete lie like it was with that movie… as in it’s not technically a lie.

It’s worse… or is it?

Continua a leggere

[EXPRESSO] A Quiet Place: Day One (2024) | The Cat Will Inherit The Earth

The acclaimed horror series about an alien invasion of sound-receptive creatures continues…. as it actually does not, by playing the classic “prequel” card, which is often a double edged sword, as it can actually expand upon the material or just feel like a stop-gap “filler” release.

In this case – as the title lays out – we go back to the very first day of the invasion, breaking out in New York, and we follow a terminal cancer-diagnosed woman (and her support cat) brought with the rest of the hospice to see a show, when suddendly vicious alien monsters fall from the skies and rampage, blind as bats but immediatly snapping in chase of of any loud noise…

In many ways, there’s little to say about A Quiet Place Day One that couldn’t/hasn’t already been discussed plenty about the previous movies, it doesn’t add really much “lore”, it just has some characters that will show up in the mainline films, but in this case it’s actually a good thing, as we have another good horror thriller with great suspence, a relatively novel twist on the monsters, excellent effects, good characters, and most importantly the ability to keep things simple at heart but far from boring, without bogging down the dread by forcing a mythos, for example.

Honestly i feel the “Day One/Origin” spin works well enough, i’m quite okay with it following mostly new people, as the “cancer-not-the-sign woman” is actually a pretty good main character, relatable, and while there’s nothing new or mindblowing added to the series, the execution it’s still quite good enough to make for a great film.

It’s a rare case when the “if not broken, don’t fix it” approach does actually still pay off, with the only little wart being the humdrum, shoehorned dream sequence.