[EXPRESSO] I Play Mother (2024) | Children of The Don’t

So, what’s this, a shitty Goodnight Mommy knockoff but supernatural?

I kinda wish it was, in hindsight, but to be fair the premise is not necessarily bad: a couple that had be waiting to hear from social services receaves the call and they adopt two young kids after their mother killed herself.

The wife, Michelle, goes off to work and the husband, Cyrus, decides to be a stay-at-home dad and try to make the kids feel at home again, to feel safe, to overcome their trauma, despite his efforts seemingly going nowhere initially, and taking its toll on the husband even more as he believes there’s something wrong with them or something from their past coming back….

Fairly standard for a modern horror about parenthood, but the prospective of the father is something a bit different and it being mixed with the “evil kids” trope could make for something quite nice, but in spite of the decent acting and some nice ideas, it is pretty superficial when tackling its own maint themes, using horror cliches as desperate clutches, giving the feel the movie seemingly doesn’t know what to do with itself at times, and yet doesn’t give you any space to doubt if it’s just Cyrus having allucinations.

It wouldn’t even be that bad of a movie, even if a frustrating one that has an idea with some legs but it gets cold feet when it realizes it tried to bit off more than it could chew…until the ending.

That really ticked me off, to put it nicely, a “bad end” just for the sake of it if ever saw one, and one that undermines or undoes all the very predicaments the movie its built on trying to convey, coming off as… stupid, honestly, there because “its a horror movie”.

Forbidden Fish Is The Sweetest/ Ningyohime no Gomen ne Gohan AKA The Cannibal Siren [MANGA REVIEW] | Era No Uta

I’d usually go by the official English name of a manga series first, but in this case i’m gonna have to use the localized title publisher JPOP chose for the Italian release, La Sirena Cannibale (The Cannibal Siren), which is actually even better than the original, Ningyohime no Gomen ne Gohan , translating literally to “The Mermaid Princess’ Guilty Meal”, even the latter is more descriptive (and sounds better in Japanese due to the allitteration).

I guess it made more sense given how Italy hugely/almost entirely created and fed the 60s “cannibal boom” in cinema, but i do like it better, sometimes localized titles here can be deceiving, excessively forward (to the point of “spoiling” any surprise effect) or just absurd, but THIS is the kind of “to the point” title that makes sense, so i’m gonna that for the rest of the review.

Written by Hiroshi Noda and illustrated by Takahiro Wakamatsu (also behind Love After World Domination and No Longer Allowed In Another World), The Cannibal Siren is about the mermaid princess Era, who lives happily in the ocean with her fish friends, beloved by all in the undersea kingdom, all is well… until one of her friends get fished out by humans.

She then runs (transforming her fish tail into legs, as mermaids do) to the surface in incognito to pay the final respects, seeing her friend being served by the nearby sushi restaurant, but then, prompted by a patron that jokingly encourages her to eat it – and i quote – “otherwise it won’t go to heaven”, she tries, and finds out she finds it delicious.

Then she begins spiraling out in a cannibalistic frenzy, ready to jump ashore to eat whichever of her subjects is fished out and served on a plate, all on the hush and despite knowing how she is a monster for doing that.

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Devil’s Third WII U [REVIEW] | Big Mouse Strikes Again

It’s the spooky-ooky season, so it means nothing but it’s a good enough excuse to review some shitty videogame of fecal magnitude, or ones that were so bad they made many “worst of year” lists, and come with some depressing and-or absurd history to them. For indeed, “the horror!”.

And Devil’s Third definitely fits the bill, being one of the many titles that confirmed once again that sometimes you should just quit when you’re ahead, or before tarnishing your own legacy due to boneheaded behaviour in mismanaging projects that languish for years due to an accolade of deals falling through, changing engines and platform targets, only to eventually release and make one realize that maybe you can actually lose talent over time.

And as they do, stories like this just highlight how even successfully rebooting the Ninja Gaiden franchise for the original X-Box… won’t stop your career from having a “Tommy Wiseau of The Room” moment, highlighting that sometimes these legendary creators might have actually needed the company they supposedly left to do whatever they wanted, not the other way around.

Especially when the finished game had to basically receive a “pity publishing” deal from Nintendo, as no one else wanted to publish this one for years (including Nintendo Of America), so it became a Wii U exclusive because we were already in the death years of the system, and i guess Nintendo could use an action game that look like it could be on PS3 or 360. Or a game, stat.

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[EXPRESSO] Warriors Of Future (2022) | Robosuits vs Plant Alien Necrobugs

Dipping once again into Netflix exclusive selection of Hong Kong and mainland China by testing my luck on sci-fi action alien shoot em up Warriors Of Future.

Plot rolls the common “meteorite smashes into Earth” situation, and no, there’s nobody fashioning the meteorite pieces into arrows thousands of years later for cool superpowers, nope, this meteorite just had a lot of “grass alien invaders” in it launching a massive offensive.

The elite human forces (escorted by advanced war robots) are almost wiped out, minus a suicide squad with just a few hours left before mankind it’s completely eradicated…

There is a bit more to it, as the invasive plantlife ironically also happens to be beneficial to this dystopic cyberpunk world by converting the polluted air into breathable oxygen, so the evil government guy that dedicated his entire life into machines that do the same very thing isn’t too pleased and tries to sabotage the team, because he’s evil and that’s about it as “motivations”.

Not really a spoiler as he makes it clear he’s gonna do that, nor the heroes (say “hi” to the eyepatch guy) fare much better, like the plot they’re pretty much constructed with stock action sci-fi movie building blocks, heck, even the robosuits they don at some points feel like the result of a confusing laundry day with Iron Man, Isaac Clark from Dead Space and Oshii’s Kerberos Corps.

I do mention videogames because while the production values are indeed high, big screen high, the action scenes and the CG (especially for the feral plant monsters) feels very “videogamey”, a lot like high budget cutscenes, BUT even so i can’t deny Warriors Of Future it’s a very entertaining, quick moving, belly-filling serving of action sci-fi dish that delivers some decent fun.

And sequelbaits to the stars.