[EXPRESSO] The Offering (2022) | Autopsy of Meshuggah Doe

One more for the recent subgenre of “Hebrew Horror”, which already gave us movies like the solid The Vigil some years ago, but with The Offering we’re into more typical territory, despite the change of social setting, religion and culture.

The plot concerns a man that after years goes back to visit his father, who still runs a jewish funeral home, bringing his pregnant wife along with him. His plans and good intentions are then shaken to their core when a mysterious corpse shows up, with an ancient demon sealed inside that soon escapes and has a synister plan for the soon-to-be-born child….

There’s also drama involving the man true reason for going back to his father, but that’s the gist, and it’s quite the decent one, but as i hinted at before, compared to The Vigil this one draws inspiration from its specific folklore for the demon (which you do get to see and looks quite good, some proper shitting pants daemon), but plays it far safer in terms of everything, and comparisons aside, The Offering has some cool demon lore but it uses a familiar playlist of tunes we’ve already seen a lot.

Which you can argue it’s not so much the movie fault as the possession/exorcism subgenre has been done to death and beyond, but if you swapped the jewish social background for the ol’ boring catholic paradigm, the movie would still be above average but nothing special that hasn’t been done better many times over.

I’m still glad to see less represented realities and new prospectives in horror (honestly i’m surprised no one still tried to do a modern horror movie about the golem myth), the acting it’s solid, but The Offering overall it’s just a decent horror film that plays it a little too safe.

[EXPRESSO] Prey For The Devil (2022) | Mid-sorcism

As much i’m very much kinda fed up with horror movies about haunting or possessions and/or about exorcisms… i’m still a horror fan/buff, so i’m up to support horror movies when they come in theathers, even if there’s the chance i’m walking into a turd. You never know, etc.

And this one didn’t look too bad from the trailers… nor did it look stunning, but whatever.

The plot of Prey For The Devil sees the Vatican secretly reopen schools for exorcists, in response to the numerous cases of demonic possessions, so they can fight back this reborn tide of evil.

But sadly for sister Ann, a young pious woman, it’s only men who are instructed to practice exorcisms, though her convintion in being gifted exactly for that purpose/role leads her to be noticed by a professor/priest that indeed believes in her gift, letting her attend the exorcism classes and perform the rituals when needed.

This leads to Ann meeting a powerful demonic force via one of the patients in care there, which spreads to the whole institute, and the demon itself has ties with Ann’s traumatic past…

Aside from the school/church/hospital setting and the more progressive idea of “female exorcists”, all of this sounds very familiar, overly so, and it’s not like there big surprises, i mean, we do have the demon possessing a little girl, the jumpscares, all the shizzle you expect to see.

Yes, indeed, but i won’t deny i was actually somewhat invested in the story, the characters are surprisingly likeable, acting it’s quite decent, the possession stuff has some flair, stuff happens at a good pace, and the movie isn’t overly long, quite the opposite.

It’s a predictable, mediocre and kinda throw-away exorcism film, run-of-the-mill even, but it’s perfectly watchable, you can do FAR, FAR worse.

Shark Zone (2003) [REVIEW] | Welcome To

As opposed to any other zone. We gotta be specific, it’s only the billionth shark movie to come out, but apparently the first one to have the balls to claim this zone as specifically designed for shark use only. So it’s NOT their fault you happen to walk in there and get eaten. Sharks are people too.

Or in other words “Go into the water, live there, die there, live there die”

What do you want? You wanna know the plot? You don’t. More accurately, you don’t need to, even if you just red a lot of reviews of shark movies you can fairly accurately assume what is gonna happen before even seeing it, or go pretty close.

This one of those that aside the usual fare of beach community, majoral dickery, and sharks munching people has the “lost treasure hunt by order of a mob boss”.

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