Rate the Last Film You Watched

[Professor Irony]

Let’s Sing Along (2001)

Timid office worker Anita Mui is entered into a big-time karaoke competition by her ex-boyfriend in a bid to stop her hiding her talent for singing, but every time she tries to sing in front of other people, her crippling stage fright lands her in embarrassing situations, and her ex’s new girlfriend spies an opportunity to show her up in front of as many people as possible. Help may be at hand in the form of her loud-mouth party animal colleague (Dayo Wong), if only she can put up with him for more than five minutes…

An amusing time-capsule of Y2K culture, this is a fairly mild film that could really have done with a tighter script, but it is heartening to see Mui return to the kind of screwball comedy she did so well, in what would prove to be one of her last film roles. While Anita could charm the birds from the trees, however, Dayo Wong is the weak link. His annoying sponge of a character might have worked for a more charismatic lead, but the story never allows him a clear chance to prove his worth, so the overall effect is a bit like seeing Audrey Hepburn paired with Rob Schneider (a derp de derp).

All Night Long (1989)

On her way home from a night out, lonely school teacher Carol Cheng ends up the hostage of a wounded bank robber, who demands she help him into an all-night convenience store to make a phone call. Getting into a scuffle with two female employees, however, the bandit drops down dead, leaving the hapless group with his enormous bag of money, a gun, and the equally huge dilemma of what to do with it.

Channelling both the look and feel of Martin Scorsese’s darkly comic yuppie panic-attack, After Hours, this generally has a bit more bite to it than the usual Hong Kong comedy fare of the time, with the main characters having to think on their feet to keep the dead body under wraps, while they deal with the variety of late night weirdos wandering in and out of the store. Gradually it evolves into something more lightweight towards the middle, however, with the only real threat to their new fortune coming from a couple of harmless local coppers.

The four women at the centre of the story do bounce well off each other, with the flashy, opportunistic Elizabeth Lee dominating the group as a kind of mirror image to straight-laced Carol, but it would have been nice if the film had allowed their shifting dynamic to remain its main focus throughout. Once the rest of the robbers, lead by an increasingly unhinged Stanley Fung, show up, it feels as if their role is largely relegated to ‘women in peril’. While we’re treated to some nice cinematography for a chase across the city as things head towards a climax, this last act also feels painfully drawn out, with a number of occasions on which it feels like the film is about to end, but somehow just keeps going.

There’s something to this one that I feel makes it stand out from the crowd, it’s just unfortunate that it never quite solidifies into anything more than an intriguing oddity.

 

[HWR]

I’ve more or less finalised the list of films for my 31 Days of Halloween 2026! marathon now. Lots to get through with most days having more than one film. Should be a solid mix of titles again, with some more controversial offerings here and there.

 

[Vincentdante]

I am starting my month long Halloween movie watchathon with the internet meme of 2026.

Backrooms (2026) from A24, rented on Amazon Prime

It was ok, this is the debut film of an amateur director and I think it shows. The concept of the Backrooms as a creepypasta probably doesn't lend itself well to a 2 hour movie so the first half an hour is spent establishing the characters, mostly Clark and Mary, of the two Clark is the most fleshed out as a character.

We spend a great deal of time learning Clark's motivations and his fears, but then he kind of disappears around the mid point as the movie shifts to focus on Mary whom sadly didn't really have a character arc besides "doctor who goes looking for Clark." She is hinted to have some kind of history with the backrooms via flashbacks to her childhood, but nothing is elaborated on and those plot threads are never picked up again afterwards. She really has no character arc at all and got very little screen time, but by the second half she becomes the main character and we are forced to root for her over Clark who is slowly losing his mind.

It then ends with an "evil/mysterious organization" rescuing Mary, somewhat akin to the SCP foundation. Mary is interrogated and her fate is left unknown. Roll to credits. Like I said movie was ok for what it was, had some moments where you were anxious about what was around the corner. As far as movies based on Internet culture it was one of the better ones.

My favorite part was the post credits when Amazon gifted me a £5 credit for another movie.

Rating: Still a better movie than Slenderman / 10

 

[HWR]

31 Days of Halloween 2026! Day I: White of the Eye (1987, Donald Cammell), Cold Light of Day (1989, Fhiona-Louise)




I’m kicking off this marathon with two films from Arrow Video focused on serial killings. The first taking place in an isolated desert setting, and the other based on the real-life murderer Dennis Nilsen (though he and his victims are given different names here), long before David Tennant would portray the role.

WotE was a very unique offering, with a transgressive approach to its slasher and giallo leanings, whilst CLoD is grimy and slow-burning, though isn’t anything too spectacular in execution. 4/5, 3/5

 

[HWR]

31 Days of Halloween 2026! Day II: The Demon of Mount Oe (1960, Tokuzō Tanaka), The Haunted Castle (1969, Tokuzō Tanaka), Ghost of Hasane Swamp (1970, Kimiyoshi Yasuda)





The first of several Radiance Films releases I’m getting through this Halloween, this was the second Dairy Gothic boxset they’ve released, and much like the first I enjoyed all three films here to varying degrees, with both TDoMO and THC being solid watches. GoHS was the weakest entry of the three, but wasn’t bad by any means. 3.5/5, 3.5/5, 3/5

 

[Vincentdante]

Nosferatu (1922)


Very old silent movie (unauthorized) adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula. Sobering to think the cast and crew of this movie passed away of old age before I was even born, quite a period piece. The movie was good, very atmospheric if slightly goofy by today's standards with all the over exaggerated acting needed for a silent movie. That said with no sound it is a pure visual story telling experience. It's a hard film to recommend but I do so anyway, especially as it's free and in the public domain.

Rating: He's just standing there, menacingly / 10

 

[Vashdaman]

The Room

I genuinely had no clue what I was getting myself into with this one. I knew the name of the film but basically nothing else, I had the vague impression it was some sort of really low budget but sophisticated art house cult classic. But this film really exists in a bizarre uncategorisable realm all of its own. The opening establishing shots of San Francisco looked quite tasteful and high quality, but then with the first lines of dialogue it was clear this was something very strange indeed.

This is a genuinely impressively disorienting piece of cinema. It's just one disjointed scene full of bizarre non sequiturs, entirely unnatural dialogue, off the scale hammy performances, and jarring tonal whiplash after another. And terrible sex scenes set to schmaltzy R&B. Yet I was completely entranced in all my confusion. At times I felt like I really was watching some piece of high art cinema that was masterfully playing with my mind, at other times I felt like I must surely be watching some self aware schlocky comedy, but at other times I thought no this just an exceptionally, exquisitely "bad" film.

I'm still honestly not sure what it really is. The consensus, from what I can gather looking online, is that the film was an entirely straight faced, heart on sleeve, earnest attempt at making some sort of moving tragedy full of insight into the human condition. A passion project that apparently cost Tommy Wiseau six million dollars of his own money! It's kind of mind boggling to imagine that's the case.

I find it interesting to ponder what this film tells us about the audiences relationship to creator intention. Looking at opinions of the film online, it seems like for some it's an artistically meritless dumpster fire partly because the film is apparently so lacking in self awareness and Wiseau fails so spectacularly in his aims. While others see The Room's supposed honestly and lack of awareness as its principle redeeming quality, something that gives it a naïve purity as well as its comedy value. In some ways it feels like the film's total disregard for accepted expectations of cinematic practice, coherent writing, or believable human interactions is something AI is well placed to reproduce (although I doubt AI could really come up with something half so strange as this), but even if it could it's clear a large part of the intrigue in The Room is the very fact that a human made it.

And for me there's almost something scary about that, the prospect that this could really be how someone views reality. Because while the film is kind of funny in the way baffling things can be, it's quite a misanthropic piece where the "good guy" gets screwed over by the ones he loves, and it's just a world where bad things happen unpredictably without much rhyme or reason. And actually, maybe accidentally, but it does kind of get to a scary truth there that film or tv rarely does because it's not very satisfying: the world sometimes makes little sense.

Something about it also reminded me slightly of Twin Peaks at times, something about the veneer of quaint goofiness and artificiality combined with this lurking discomfort and vague dread just below the surface. I was half expecting some atavistic evil to burst forth and swallow everyone up towards the end. That never quite happens, but I would probably rate The Room as amongst the most genuinely disquieting viewing experiences I've ever had. And however he got there, I give Wiseau legitimate credit as a film maker for that.

 

[Dai]

Disclosure Day
When a film-maker tackles the same subject matter multiple times, there's an expectation of escalation, that the new will build upon the old. Close Encounters was a mystery where aliens showed up at the end. ET was a big-hearted drama with one alien who appeared throughout. War of the Worlds was a road movie with several big action set pieces and a pervading sense of apocalyptic dread. The marketing for Disclosure Day leans into the expectation of escalation, making it look like an action-heavy conspiracy thriller that will build to epic alien encounters. But it's not. This feels like a movie that Spielberg should have made in the 1970s, or at the latest the 1990s while The X-Files was airing.

Disclosure Day is, more or less, another road movie, but unlike War of the Worlds there's almost no action, just one car chase that feels like it only exists for the trailer. It affects the tone of a conspiracy thriller by having a shady organisation on the protagonists' tail, but there's really no mystery to unravel or secrets to find. The scope of the movie never moves beyond its title: getting a bunch of alien videos from A to B so they can be shown to the world. Along the way the characters have many, many conversations about what it would mean for humanity to know that aliens are real, none of which really cover ground that hasn't been trodden a hundred times before.

There's some promising build-up, but it all comes together as an exercise in frustration. Don't expect much in the way of alien encounters; most of it is just presented as people watching archival videos on a screen. And just as it looks like the movie might be about to make its Big Statement and get to some close encountering... it cuts to black and the credits roll. It's the worst blue-balls-inducing ending I've seen since "Liam Neeson is about to fight wolves, but you don't get to see it" in The Grey. This is the problem when a writer wants their character to say something profound; the writer themself needs to think of the profound thing to say. If they can't, then the viewer is left wondering if the story had much to say at all.

Plus don't get me started about the rose-tinted way that the movie tries to paint the aliens as benevolent while glossing over the fact that they kidnap two children and subject them to involuntary brain surgery.

I didn't hate Disclosure Day. But it was disappointing.

 

[HWR]

31 Days of Halloween 2026! Day III: Hatchet (2006, Adam Green), Hatchet II (2010, Adam Green), Hatchet III (2013, BJ McDonnell), Victor Crowley (2017, Adam Green)






I spent a leisurely late afternoon and evening watching through this franchise courtesy of the new Swamp Slaughter boxset from Umbrella Entertainment. The Hatchet movies are classic slashers and play out the way you’d expect, with a deformed killer, Victor Crowley (played by Kane Hodder) roaming the swamps of New Orleans. The first film also sports several cameos from well-known horror icons like Robert Englund and the late Tony Todd (who also returns for the sequel), and was a fun romp, ending on a grisly note.

HII picks up straight from the ending of the original, and is more of a revenge flick as the lone survivor from the last film, Marybeth (Danielle Harris) returns to the swamp to hunt down Victor Crowley and avenge her family and friends, all whilst we get more backstory into the antagonist. HIII continues the narrative in a nice through-line across the initial trilogy with appearances from Zach Galligan, Caroline Williams, Sid Haig, and Derek Mears.

Finally, VC, set a decade or so after the events of the preceding trilogy, and is both the most low-budget and weakest offering amongst the four. The Hatchet franchise is a fun one, even if not every film is as strong as one another. 3.5/5, 3/5, 3.5/5, 2.5/5

 

[Vincentdante]

The Call of Cthulhu (2005)

Bit late posting this one.

Ok this movie is great, this is an almost perfect adaptation of the original story, I have read the short story multiple times over at this point and can confidently say that almost all of the story beats follow the original written work almost 1:1, with only a few minor tweaks. Although this movie was made in 2005 making it fairly modern, they took the artistic decision to film it in the style of a 1925 silent movie. Using practical effects that wouldn't be out of place in the original King Kong, and the effects are very cleverly done here.

My favorite scenes were on R'yleh with how the cast managed to visually portray the euclidean scenery as described in the book. Using optical illusions to show how a man managed for fall downwards into a hole that was positioned vertically on a wall. Or when they were fleeing from Cthulhu and one man slipped into a gap that from our perspective, didn't exist in a no clip way that would have made the backroom writers proud.

This movie also addresses a long standing pet peeve I have as far as pop culture goes. This was an adaptation of The Call of Cthulhu, not The Shadow over Innsmouth like every other adaptation with this same title, looking at you video game makers.

Rating: The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents / 10.

 

[HWR]

31 Days of Halloween 2026! Day IV: Hardware (1990, Richard Stanley), Dust Devil (1992, Richard Stanley), Color out of Space (2019, Richard Stanley)




Today’s viewing is a trilogy of Richard Stanley films, all also released by Umbrella Entertainment.

Hardware was a curious blend of sci-fi dystopia and western leanings, whilst Dust Devil focused on the mysterious titular figure in a South African setting, which combines horror with the spiritual and mystic, and was a unique watch to say the least.

Finally, CooS, starring Nicholas Cage, is also sci-fi themed, focusing on a family moving to to a new rural area, only for a meteorite to crash on their property and causing devastating mutations. Overall, Hardware was a solid watch, and Color out of Space didn’t quite live up to its potential, but Dust Devil was the real standout here. 3.5/5, 4/5, 3/5

 

[HWR]

31 Days of Halloween 2026! Day V: Revenge of the Blood Beast (1966, Michael Reeves), The Night of the Devils (1972, Giorgio Ferroni)




Two offerings from Raro Video this evening, the first being RotBB, also known as The She Beast, was the directorial debut of Michael Reeves, who would go on to direct Witchfinder General before his untimely death. This feature was sadly very underwhelming and also unfunny to boot despite its attempts at humour. TNotD was a better affair, and offered some decent Italian horror (of which there will be a good amount in this marathon). 2/5, 3.5/5

 

[Vincentdante]

The Whisperer in Darkness (2011)



I missed yesterdays movie as I was catching up on other things.

Whisperer in Darkness based on the Story by H.P. Lovecraft is made by the same director and crew that did the awesome Call of Cthulhu adaptation I reviewed the other day.

Well this is a movie of two halves, The first hour follows the book closely, almost as closely as Call of Cthulhu did but with a few more additions than that needed (more in that soon). But still very faithful to the book with events happening shot for shot and at exactly the 1 hour mark the original story comes towards it's end.

Except the ending Lovecraft wrote never comes, and the run time still has 42 minutes left... Oh no.

What follows after the scene where Wilmarth escapes the cottage is what I can only describe as fan fiction. Fan fiction that completely undermines the Mi-Go and the intent of the story. See in the original story the Mi-Go whispered of greatness, tempting Wilmarth to travel the stars with it, while unnervingly coy yet still upfront about what that means. The idea was that the Mi-Go could be anywhere, talking to anyone of us through anyone we know, and intelligent enough to manipulate our understanding to only ever be known to us as a folkstory after some people had been spirited away. The events of the original story is when that facade slips a bit and a human notices them.

In this extra 42 minutes of runtime however, now suddenly the Mi-Go wants to conquer the world and it's up to Action Wilmarth to stop them, The Mi-Go have rectuited human cultists to summon a great old one to help them do this but when the ritual ends in failure the ever intelligent Mi-Go turn into mindless monsters that kill the cultists out of frustration. Then we have the suspense of Wilmarth needing to comandeer a crop dusting plane to escape, as the Mi-Go tear through the roof of a barn (despite the door being wide open) and an aerial battle soon ensures...

Ok enough exposition. To summarise my complaints, as soon as the story veers from it's original, both Wilmarth and the Mi-Go behave entirely out of character, and the transition is almost immediate. For all intents and purposes I think they should have kept the original ending instead of throwing it away. Lovecraft's ending wasn't quite as dramatic but it worked.

Rating: We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity / 10.