Movie Review - Hypnotic

Director: Robert Rodriguez
Genre: Thriller/ Mystery/ Action
Runtime: 93 minutes
Year: 2023
Starring: Ben Affleck, Alice Braga, William Fichtner, Dayo Okeniyi, Jeff Fahey, JD Pardo, Jackie Earle Haley
 
Description: A detective (Ben Affleck) investigates a mystery involving his missing daughter and a secret government program.

Review: Danny Rourke looked the other way for just a second when he was in the park with his daughter, and she was gone forever. Years later, he’s still not over that, but at least he wants to be able to do his job as a detective. One day a report comes in that someone will rob a bank later that day. They do, but in a very bizarre way. Danny goes to investigate and immediately stumbles upon an almost supernatural world he was unaware of.

They exist, people who can convince you that you’ve done something and immediately believe it, even if it turns out not to be true. That is the power of suggestion. Director Robert Rodriguez took this fact and turned it into fiction. In “Hypnotic”, some people posses the gift to use certain trigger words and make people see a certain reality.

It’s a good concept, but not perfectly executed. Rodriguez was clearly inspired by movies like “Inception”, “Tennant” and “Shutter Island”. How so, you need to watch it yourself. Withing the reality of “Hypnotic”, a few details don’t quite make sense. In the end everything turns out to make sense according to the rules of this film.

The film has some surprising and original twists, but the eventually keep coming and it just becomes ridiculous. Even after the credits there is another twist, this was unnecessary.
Ben Affleck is on auto-pilot here. Definitely not one of his best roles, he just does what needs to be done.

Overall, “Hypnotic” is not a bad film, but it’s not all that special. It’s one of those movies that you will forget you’ve watched at the end of the year.

Rating: 3/ 5

Book Review - Sometimes I Lie by Alice Feeney

Title: Sometimes I Lie
Series: -
Author: Alice Feeney
 
Description: Amber wakes up in a hospital. She can’t move. She can’t speak. She can’t open her eyes. She can hear everyone around her, but they have no idea. Amber doesn’t remember what happened, but she has a suspicion her husband had something to do with it.
 
Review: Amber is in a coma with locked-in-syndrom. She hears everything, but can’t move, speak or open her eyes. She has no idea how she ended up in the hospital, but she thinks her husband has something to do with it.
 
“Sometimes I Lie” is Alice Feeney’s debut novel and an impressive one. The book is written from Amber’s perspective. We read about the present day, diary entries from her childhood years and the period leading up to the accident. Throughout the story, you get little pieces of information that will eventually fall into place. You have no idea who to trust, not even Amber, because she has no recollection of what happened. And Feeney manages to surprise us with some surprising twists and reveals. Something that she does in all the novels that I have read by her.
 
There are little clues throughout the book that eventually come together, but still the twists are very surprising. It’s a well-crafted story. Not all characters are as interesting, it’s mostly the connections between certain characters that make it such a good story.
 
Alive Feeney has now become an auto-buy author, I love her writing style, her twists, the way she sets up her stories and eventually surprises us with a surprising reveal.
 
Rating: 4/ 5

Summerween 2023 - My TBR

Summerween is a readathon that booktuber/ bookstagrammers Gabby and Olivia host every summer, where they read scary books for a week. This year, I decided to participate. The readathon takes place from 7-13 July and has reading prompts. I choose to read 5 books. And because I'm not a fast reader and can enver read 5 books in a week, I decided to dedicate the month of July to Summerween. So instead of mood reading this month, I have a chosen TBR. 

First, let's look at the prompts:

I picked five books to read for each prompt:

Prompt 1: Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Prompt 2: What Lies Between Us by John Marrs
Prompt 3: Coraline by Neil Gaimann
Prompt 4: The Last Thing to Burn by Will Dean
Prompt 5: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

I wanted to make a prediction of my raking, how I'm going to like these books:

1. Coraline

2. What Lies Between Us

3. Slaughterhouse Five

4. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

5. The Last Thing to Burn

Stay tuned to see what I eventually rank them. 

There is also a list of photo prompts, that you can post on your social media.

I'm super excited to join my first readathon, reading spooky, thrilling and scary books. Let me know if you're going to join as well.

10s Movie Review - El Hoyo

Director: Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia
Genre: Horror/ Thriller/ Science Fiction
Runtime: 94 minutes
Year: 2019
Starring: Ivan Massague, Zorian Equileor, Antonia San Juan, Emilio Buaie, Alexandra Masangkay

Description: A vertical prison with one cell per level. Two people per cell. Only one food platform and two minutes per day to feed. An endless nightmare trapped in the hole.

I WATCHED THIS MOVIE FOR MY 2023 MOVIE CHALLENGE.
WEEK 26: A MOVIE IN ANOTHER LANGUAGE THEN ENGLISH
 
Review: “El Hoyo”, in English known as “The Platform”, is as sharp as the story is simple. We meet Goreng, who volunteers to spend six mind in ‘el hoyo’ in order to get a diploma. It’s a vertical ‘prison’, with two people per floor and a platform of food that will go through each room every day. But there is a catch. It only passes through for two minutes and you can’t save any food for a later moment.

If you’re on floor 1, you’re lucky. The platform is filled with delicious food and you can eat anything you want. But after a few minutes the platform descends one floor further. Goreng wakes up on floor 48 on the first day, and by then there is very little edible food on the platform. And there a several floors under his. Goreng’s more experiences roommate Trimagaso explains to him that he can better eat as much as he can, because Trimagasi has been on lower floor before. After all, every once in a while, all the visitors will wake up on another floor.

To say that the dynamics of this system is an obvious metaphor for our capitalist system is perhaps a little too easy. The film seems more like a cynical response to how mostly right-liberal politicians think they can justify tax breaks for the top. You would think that, if you all just is a normal portion, there will be plenty food left for the people on lower floors. Even for the ones at the very bottom, unknown to how many floors there are in total. But it becomes clear that the people who have been on lower floors, adapt the ‘anti-social’ behavior almost immediately ones they get higher up. It’s the system that shows the people’s true colors.

The film is brutal, gory and disturbing, but I loved it! Not for the faint of heart, but perfect for those who enjoy disturbing films with social criticism.

Rating: 4,5 / 5

Book Review - Moby Dick by Herman Melville

Title: Moby Dick
Series: -
Author: Herman Melville
 
Description: “Moby Dick” is the story of an eerily compelling madman pursuing an unholy war against a creature as vast and dangerous and unknowable as the sea itself. But more than just a novel of adventure, more than an encyclopedia of whaling lore and legend, the book can be seen as part of it’s author’s lifelong meditation on America.
 
Review: We follow the story of Moby Dick through the eyes of Ishmael, a native of Massachusetts who desperately wants to get to sea. He finds Captain Ahab, who he will travel to sea with. But Ahab’s real purpose of their trip is to catch the white whale to whom he lost his leg. The whale he calls Moby Dick.
 
“Moby Dick” is a book I wanted to read for a whale, a classic tale that everyone knows. The main reason it took me so long to pick it up, is because it intimidated me. The size scared me and most books from that time period have a slow pace.
 
I’m glad I finally read it, it’s a beautifully written book with a fantastic character study. “Moby Dick” is also one of the most difficult book I ever read. The old writing style made my brain work overtime. Author Herman Melville used a lot of terms you rarely here nowadays and he is extremely descriptive. Like I predicted, the pace is really slow. And because the book is mainly character driven, it has some lesser interesting moments.
 
I’m happy to have ticked off this box and literary fans must read “Moby Dick”. I think it’s a book that every book loved has to read once in their life.
 
Rating: 4/ 5

Book Review - The Doll's House by M.J. Arlidge

Title: The Doll’s House
Series: Helen Grace # 3
Author: M.J. Arlidge
 
Description: A young woman wakes up in a cold, dark cellar, with no idea how she got there or who her kidnapper is. So begins her terrible nightmare.
 
Nearby, the body of another young woman is discovered buried on a remote beach. But the dead girl was never reported missing. Her estranged family having received regular text from her over the years. Someone has been keeping her alive from beyond the grave.
 
For Detective Inspector Helen Grace it’s chilling evidence that she’s searching for a monster who is not just twisted but also clever and resourceful. A predator who’s killed before. And as Hellen struggles to understand the killer’s motivation, she begins to realize that she’s in a desperate race against time…
 
Review: Ruby wakes up in a basement, having no recollection of how she got there and who did brought her here. She has been abducted. Nearby, a young woman is found dead, but she was kept alive on social media, therefore she was never reported missing. Detective Helen Grace knows she must find the culprit, before he strikes again.
 
One of the reasons I always enjoy reading M.J. Arlidge’s books, is because of the short chapters. “The Doll’s House” is no different. Chapters of only 2 or 3 pages, each with a different perspective. Also love that last part. Aside from our main character Helen Grace, we follow one of the victims Ruby, Helen’s former colleague Charlie, journalist Emily, and the culprit. But there are more characters, a bit too many and not all characters are interesting enough to read about. At least not from their perspective. The chapters following the one’s that have mentioned are the most interesting.
 
Helen Grace is one of the best characters I’ve ever read about. She is complex and very flawed. This makes the book interesting and she is a character I like to read about more.
 
I enjoyed the book, like the previous two. But it’s clearly my least favorite so far. I’m not going to abandon this series, definitely not, and I still think “The Doll’s House” is a good book. But the story was a bit too plain and standard for me. Where his previous books really shocked me at times, this third book just never had that effect. It was all a bit more predictable and didn’t have many surprising elements.
 
I met M.J. Arlidge earlier this year, he is a truly kind person who takes the time for his readers. This series still has many books in it, and I want to read them all.  
 
Rating: 3/ 5

20s Movie Review - There's Someone Inside Your House

Director: Patrick Brice
Genre: Thriller/ Horror/ Mystery
Runtime: 96 minutes
Year: 2021
Starring: Sydney Park, Theodore Pellerin, Asjha Cooper, Dale Whibley, Jesse LaTourette, Burkley Duffield, Diego Josef, Zane Clifford

Description: The graduating class at Osborne High is being targeten by a masked assailant, intent on exploring the darkest secret of each victim, and only a group of misfit outsiders can stop the killings.

Review: “There’s Someone Inside Your House” is the film adaptation of the novel of the same name. In the film, a masked thriller targets a group of teenagers who all carry a secret with them. The killer is out to expose the teens with secrets and kill them in gruesome ways.

The opening of the film is quite promising. Unfortunately, the pace sags considerably halfway through. This is due to the fact that the teenagers we follow are not particularly interesting. Aside from the lead character Makani, we don’t get much backstory from the youngsters, which makes them very superficial and one-dimensional. Thus, they only serve one purpose: to be killed. This could work fine in the slasher genre, but not here. And the questions “who is the culprit” eventually means little. By the end of the film, the tension is gone and you’re left with the feeling that there could have been more to it.
Is there nothing good about this film? Yes, there is. The appearance of the killer is creative. He wears the “face” of the person he is about to murder. And the few kills we get, are filmed well.

It’s moderately entertaining, but highly forgettable.

Rating: 2/ 5