[EXPRESSO] Keeper (2025) | ♬ Go to the woods and see ♬

After Longlegs and The Monkey, Oz Perkins is back with a new horror film (releasing just 2 days ago here), Keeper, but i’ve never heard much… well, anything about it, ill or good, but it might be me accidentally missing coverage, wouldn’t be the first time.

So i went in blind… and i kinda get why this didn’t generate much buzz, maybe, but first the plot.

A couple spends their anniversary weekend in a secluded cabin in the woods, and once there strange things start happening, revealing the house’s dark secrets..

I don’t think Keeper is a bad film, at all, but i’m willing to call it Oz Perkins first “trip up”, it is disappointing, because even if the final twist pays off, makes the build up worth it for an interesting turn… it doesn’t change that it has to do so with a character explaining the lore to us, instead of you known, just showing us, since it’s a movie and all of that, plus it it intriguing but nothing special enough to balance out and gliss over the fact the build up (and the premise in itself) seems to be made irritating and generic on purpose with how the cliches are placed.

Yes, obviously to play with audiences’ expectations (and with the horror archetype of the “cabin in the woods”), and it does work, but the story could have been more cohesive, or have people invested more by the narrative itself instead of the deliberate bold faced deception that also saps any mystery the story could have had when the loredump drops, to say nothing of how some subplots are simply kinda forgotten by the end.

It’s still far from unwatchable, mind you, thanks in no small part to Maslany’s great performance as Liz, but it’s also disappointing.

Until Dawn PS4 [REVIEW] | Ravenous Nation

Once every console generation, someone reinvents Dragon Lair with better graphics and various levels of pretentiousness.

This time around Supermassive Games did, propelled by the popularity of the garbage David “EMOTIONS” Cage/Quantic Dream peddled to a fairly ignorant audience, with Until Dawn, followed by The Impatient and then The Quarry, which i feel also inspired Namco Bandai to get a slice of this with their The Dark Pictures series.

Looking at the original PS4 game because at the time of writing (and most likely posting as well) i don’t have a PS5 hence i can’t play the remake/remaster they did for it, and honestly i stopped to try tracking down the “Extended Edition” since – apparently – it had just a couple of very minor, inconsequiential scenes as DLC content to redeem via a code on a voucher that has by now expired, and you can’t even buy it on PSN, so sod it.

Continua a leggere

[EXPRESSO] The Watchers (2024) Live Theathre In The Woods

Mr Twister is once again back on the silver screen, and we’re going back to the woods, this time not to hide while people believing to be the Four Horsemen invade your home and impose an improbabile apocalyptic task to you and your family, or to bother the geezers, but to play the sickest livestream event of them all… to an unknown audience.

… oh wait, this is actually written and directed by Inasha Night Shyamalan, one of M. Night’ (with Trap, directed by him, also releasing in 2024) daughters, here at her directorial debut.

The premise sees a girl, Mina, a 28 yo artist, finding herself lost and isolated inside a huge forest in western Ireland, only for her to take refuge in a cottage and unknownly get trapped in there alongside three other people, to be watched at night by some strange creatures dwelling there.

What’s scariest than improv theather to a fussy audience that might just kill you like a fly if it wishes so, after all? Very little, outside of some cosmic horror older than time itself and such.

While there’s definitely a similar imprint to her father, The Watchers doesn’t rely entirely on a last second last act twist to flip around the narrative, i mean, it’s kinda easy to predict partly what the creatures could be (if nothing else for the location), and they don’t throw out some stupid and-or unsatisfying curveball just for the sake of throwing off the audience, so for best or worst it relies more on actually making you care the lore and the plot being interesting in itself.

Still nothing really special despite the clever hook and good casting for what are just functional characters, but honestly i’d say it’s quite the decent watch, especially for a directorial debut.