The Anxiety Ridden Oculus

Rating: 3/5

     I don't even know where to begin. Oh yeah I do... this movie was a huge mind trip that led to nothing. I feel like nothing was adequately explained. There was an attempt to explain the origins of the mirror in the beginning of the movie, but after that the idea was given up on. I have no idea why the mirror was so evil, and who Marisol was.  Was she the original evil mirror spirit? Was she the first person killed by the mirror? So many questions and no answers. Then the whole movie I spent trying to figure out what the hell reality was. Most of the movie was patched together pretty well though there were some faults. For instance, The finance, Mike, was supposed to call every hour, and if she didn't pick up he was supposed to call the police. Yet he magically appears in the house and gets stabbed. One theory as to why he would be there is that the mirror intercepted the call and told him to come over. However, throughout the course of the movie, the mirror messes with the cell phone on the premises. No where in the movie is it implied or inferred that the mirror can make false calls out. 
     Another concerning character is the mother, what the hell was wrong with her? I swear she was strangled to death. Yet there she was chained up in the room. Was she possessed? Why did she eat plates? Also the dad had some weird habits, like peeling all his nails off... why? It also seemed that the mirror targeted males and dogs, also unexplained. 
     Over all, the movie did keep me on the edge of my seat. However, the ending was a complete let down. To make this movie truly scary, I would have anchored it in reality and put a psychological twist on it. I feel like that would have had more closure than an evil mirror with unknown origin. Ironically enough, the movie did start off attempting to bring psychology into the picture but that was quickly abandoned and never addressed again. Tragically, with the way the movie ended, I'm sensing a sequel. 

The Devil Inside (2012)

Rating: 2/5 (Could have been a solid 3)

Let me start off by saying the nun on the cover is in the film for 3 seconds,  so don't expect her to be a main component. 


This is set up as a documentary style film, where the daughter of an "incarcerated" woman wants to go to Rome to see her mother to try to help her. The mother killed 3 clergy men while an exorcism was being performed on her. They sent her to a psychiatric hospital in Rome. The daughter is worried whatever made her mother snap might be in her.

So she and her cameraman friend Michael travel to Rome. So long story short the mother is indeed possessed and during the test exorcism the devil transfers to one of the priests performing it. The priest shows mild signs of being possessed and it really shows when he is performing a baptism and tries to drown the baby. The priest returns home and everyone is all shocked and see that he is possessed, the cops show up and the priest steals a gun and shoots himself. The devil transfers to the daughter, causing her to have a seizure and taken to the hospital. She kills a nurse and the remaining priest and Michael rush her to Father Whoever to help perform the exorcism. On the way there the devil seems to possibly transfer to Michael and he crashes the car killing them all. That was the ending. It was shit. Like you can't end a movie like that. They never really explained if the devil completely left the mother so you're left wondering is she okay and will she be released from the psychiatric hospital. 

Where did the devil go next? Who knows! They could have ended this with a kick ass exorcism but took an easy car crash ending instead. Such a shame.

The Bell Witch Haunting (2013)

Rating: 0/5

(It's the 2013 version, as you can tell because it has "the" in front of it)

Another "found footage" film. 

When you hear haunting you think ghosts not demonic possessions. It ends up being more demonic possession with a ghost that is not an actual ghost. It was painful and so confusing.

A family just moved to Tennessee from Chicago and they only make it a week before everyone but one dies. The week felt like months. We've got a normal family; mom, dad, sometimes bitchy sister, and younger brother who gets a camera for his birthday that he will use to film every single waking hour of his life from that point forward. 

Annoying things/Issues:

• They say it's January, you do not have a pool party in January in Tennessee
• When the dad is cleaning the dishes in the kitchen blood gushes up through the garbage disposal and douses him, but no one seem to think it's blood or even speculates that it could be blood
• All the bad shit happens to the daughter, she keeps having night terrors and supernatural things happen to her
• The boy, of course, set up a bunch of security cams around the house, capturing the supernatural things happening, but never brings them up. I'm pretty sure he just records it and never watches it
• If you have prior knowledge to the Bell Witch stories or have visited it you will know everything wrong with this film
• When the mom is going through family photos there are always marks or stains over the daughters face, under the glass of the frame, no one really finds this super odd because they are obviously very stupid
• The husband has a seizure by the pool and end ups walking the street with bloody forearms until the wife hysterically calls the cops and they bring him home
• The daughter all disappears and the mom hysterically call the cops and the cop finds her eating a raccoon in a sewer and bring her home, this doesn't seem to phase them so much 
• The wife calls a priest for an exorcism and during it the daughter is obviously possessed, but during the film you will also see the "ghost" which is just a dirty person who lives in the cave with no ghostlike qualities

Also the 21th of January, just how do you do that?

Absence (2013)

Rating: 0/5

This does not need a long review. It is a "found footage" movie and the majority of the movie feels like you are watching a really boring home movie for friends you don't really care about. 

The start of the movie is that a pregnant woman, close to the end of her pregnancy, wakes up to find that she isn't pregnant anymore. Her and her husband are under investigation that they committed an abortion in the last trimester. Apparently the doctors aren't that good because I feel they would be able to tell if two non-doctors performed some kind of home abortion. Anyways they decide to get away from all the questions from neighbors and reporters by going on a therapy vacation to a cabin. Don't worry the woman's annoying film major brother is going to tag along to film every painstaking moment of this trip.

The movie is pretty much the husband and brother playing pranks on each other and an excruciating game night scene that just has nothing to do with anything. How did the woman magically lose her baby? 

No really, aliens. How do you know? During the credits they will show a generic alien face, so make sure you wait a bit and watch credits.

Hollow (2011)

Rating: 0/5

This movie is not worth your time, trust me, please. Four friends, or two couples, go to the brunette's dead grandpa's/uncle's home. He was a vicar, though that information really didn't matter. 

What's wrong with this movie:
-The vicar has been dead a year and yet all his stuff was still at his house, his family didn't want to clean up or keep anything apparently, like what's up with that. Gives you the idea he's not actually dead and still living there.

-The suicide tree, it seems to cause a lot of problems. Why didn't they just cut it down? If they didn't want to get to close to it they could have burned it, would have saved everyone a lot of trouble. 

-I don't understand why the brunette and her fiance were like practically over because I was under the impression that they like just got engaged. 

-What was the point with hitting the fox and then having the fox on the altar dissected? Was this karma because you hit the fox? 

-The brunette has asthma, in the last 20 minutes she does a lot of running and screaming and doesn't get an asthma attack when she got one the night before from a nightmare, just unrealistic. 

-Also during the last 20 minutes or so, the other girl twists her ankle while running but she seems to run just fine after that, bullshit.

-They have to just rely on the camcorders flashlight for light because there's no power at the house and apparently they don't have flashlights, how did that camcorder last all weekend because they used it a lot.

-A fisherman told a random story about a friar and something else, didn't go anywhere, was pointless. 

Everything until the end where they all die is useless, they put a lot of things that could be interesting to the story in but they go nowhere with it. My dad left 30 minutes into this movie and we had to force him back so he could suffer with the rest of us. 

Devil's Pass (2013)

Rating: 2/5

I really would not recommend this movie. Like it started out okay but then got really weird and just not good.

So in 1959 a group of 7 people while skiing or trekking in the Dyatlov Pass in Russia were all found dead in weird ways. It's been a huge mystery as of what happened ever since. Five students who are interested in this mystery decide to go to Russia to the pass to follow what the group of people did before dying to make it a documentary. 

Shorty after they set up the premise they have a news report showing the students are now missing/dead, so we know they don't make it.

Since this is a documentary they have found some people to interview who were around during the deaths. The first person was a guy who was supposed to go with them but didn't and when they find him at the old folks home he puts a sign in the window telling the students to go away, but of course none of them thought it necessary to learn any Russian at all so they don't know what the fuck the sign says. The second person they interview is a lady who actually helped find the bodies of the skiers , and the most interesting thing she tells them is that there were actually 11 bodies found but the government kind of covered it up.

The rest of the movie is the people arguing if this was a government conspiracy or was it a yeti. Yeti was mentioned so many times that you are expecting a yeti, but there never is one so you're kind of disappointed. 

In the snow they find a lot of footprints that kind of start and end like the person was dropped down from the sky (this is never really explained). They like to yell a lot without any fear of starting some kind of avalanche which will be their downfall. 

So the first student dies in an avalanche. The second broke his leg during the avalanche and while they're recovering from this "freak" accident two random ass people make it there (which apparently are government agents) and start shooting at them. The three remaining students ditch the broken legged guy and run to a bunker they found prior that locks from the outside, which, in my opinion, is a really dumb idea. One guy gets shot on the way in the bunker and then the agents lock them in. Shocker.

They are now faced with the impending doom or starvation and dehydration, I would have rather been shot. 

Apparently the Russian discovered teleportation and some kind of weird monster with fangs that were bald and shit, not yetis. 

And like it was fucked up before this but it gets more fucked up now, because I hate when there isn't a good explanation.
-The two extra bodies found in 1959 were the two students who got locked in the room with the teleportation device.
-In the beginning they showed footage from the girls camera while in the bunker locked in the room with the teleportation portal. While exploring the bunker they find the camera they are using on a table (because they took the camera while they went through the portal so the agents found it in 1959). No one tells you how the investigators recovered either camera from the bunker because there is no way the government would have let them in there. So how the hell did they get it and why didn't they get both? 
-In the 1959 scene where they take the two dead students bodies into the bunker to keep them they comment on how their clothes are weird, like what about the camcorder, that's pretty modern looking, you don't think this was some kind of warning that you shouldn't be playing with this shit?
-The two monster that they find in the bunker are the two students themselves so how are they existing at the same time, like I feel that is a huge flaw because it's like a mix of time travel and teleportation and they shouldn't exist because the students didn't go through the portal yet so ugh

Just save your time and don't watch it. This movie would have been better with a paranormal element not this weird teleportation government conspiracy crap.